Investing.com – Crude futures settled higher on Friday, but posted a fifth-weekly loss as investors continued to fret about the glut in supply while the number of active U.S. drilling rigs rose for a 23rd straight week.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for August delivery rose 27 cents to settle at $43.01 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent added 30 cents to trade at $45.52 a barrel.
Drillers added 11 oil rigs in the week to June 23, bringing the total count up to 758, the most since April 2015, energy services firm Baker Hughes Inc said in a report on Friday.
The report from Baker Hughes comes in the wake of growing fears that the oversupply problem in the market will continue despite Opec and its allies’ high compliance with the global deal to curb production.
In May, Opec and non-Opec members agreed to extend production cuts for a period of nine months until March, but stuck to production cuts of 1.8 million bpd agreed in November last year.
A monitoring committee made up of OPEC members and producers outside the group on Thursday said compliance to the deal reached 106% in May, the highest since the deal was first clinched late last year.
Sentiment on oil turned soured this week amid significant selling pressure, as prices entered bear market territory, falling 20% since the turn of the year.