Crude oil settlements continued to spiral downward on Tuesday, registering back-to-back declines as rising output in the U.S and a survey showing a fall last month in OPEC compliance, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, June West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.18, or 2.4%, to settle at $47.66 a barrel.
On the London ICE Futures Exchange, July Brent crude, the global benchmark, lost $1.06 cents, or 2.1%, to end trading at $50.46 a barrel.
OPEC compliance with the production cut agreement that began in 2017 has seen a month-to-month decline, according to a Reuters survey.. Member compliance was at 90% in April—a bit below a revised-down 92% in March.
“Overall compliance remains high, especially relative to OPEC’s previous coordination efforts,” said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric, told MarketWatch. “The problem OPEC is facing is commitment levels haven’t really changed, but U.S. production has.”
Late Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute will issue data on domestic petroleum supplies, followed by the Energy Information Administration’s more closely watched weekly report early Wednesday.
Analysts polled by S&P Global Platts expect the EIA to report a decline of 2.25 million barrels in crude stockpiles for the week ending April 28.
Back on the New York Mercantile Exchange, June natural gas ended at $3.195 per million British thermal units, down 0.6%.