Oil prices rose on Friday with Brent crude oil futures rising to just a shy of $50 per barrel as OPEC+ agreed to ease oil-output cuts next year after almost a week of negotiations.
Brent is trading at $49.06 per barrel by 14:27GMT after hitting its highest since early March at $49.92.
West Texas Intermediate is trading at$45.89 barrel. Both benchmarks are set for a fifth straight week of gains.
Nigerian Bonny Light traded at $48.68 per barrel.
The group in a meeting postponed by two days and additional delay on Thursday agreed to increase output slightly from January by 500,000 barrels per day with ministers hold monthly consultations to decide on the next steps.
OPEC failed to reach a compromise on a broader policy for the rest of 2021 in the meeting chaired by Russia Energy Minister.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies rescued the oil market earlier this year from an unprecedented slump, slashing production by 9.7 million barrels a day as the pandemic crushed demand.
The cartel returned 2 million barrels a day of that output to the market in August without a hiccup and was due to add a similar volume next month.
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OPEC+ had been expected to continue existing cuts until at least March, after backing down from the plans to raise output by 2 million bpd.
The agreed increase means the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia, a group known as OPEC+, are set to reduce production by 7.2 million bpd, or 7% of global demand from January, compared with current cuts of 7.7 million bpd.
“It’s a wise decision,” Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told state-run news service Shana after the talks concluded. “These monthly meetings can help preserve stability in the market” and the additional supplies coming in January won’t have a big impact, he said.
By: Ifunanya Ikueze
