Investing.com -- Oil futures plunged on Friday below $45 a barrel, after the International Energy Agency painted a bleak picture on the short-term price outlook of crude.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, deliveries for WTI Crude dropped 4.40% or 2.10 to $44.95 a barrel, as prices for Texas light sweet dive toward yearly lows. Prices for crude futures plummeted from a high of $47.28 during late Asian trading.
WTI crude is approaching a yearly-low of $44.45 a barrel from late-January.
On the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), April deliveries for brent crude fell 3.70% or 2.13 to $55.15. At Friday's close, the spread between international and U.S. benchmarks moved above $10 a barrel – up from an 8.7 level at the start of the week.
U.S. supply levels demonstrate few signs of retreating from record-highs, according to the IEA. Nationwide, crude oil inventories have reached 448.9 million barrels – the most in more than 80 years.
"It continues to defy expectations," the IEA said in its monthly report.
The agency also revised upward its forecast of annual demand to 93.5 million barrels per day, up by 100,000 from previous estimates.
Reports from oil services firm Baker Hughes (NYSE:BHI) that weekly rig counts had tumbled to its lowest level in four years had little impact on WTI prices. The number of oil and gas rigs for the week ending Mar. 6 fell by 67 to 1,125, down by nearly 600 rigs from last year at this time. For the week that ended Feb. 27 oil and gas rigs in the U.S. declined by 75 to 1,192. A week earlier, the rig count dropped by 43 to 1,267.
Despite the dwindling levels, domestic production continues to hover near record-highs of 9.0 million per day, according to Baker Hughes. Earlier this week, the EIA revised its annual production level to 9.35 million barrels a day.
As prices tumbled on Friday, Opec issued a bulleting blaming the United States' reliance on shale oil production for the continual declines. Still, it is expected that shale oil production in the U.S. could reach the lowest in four years by April.
Meanwhile, the rapidly appreciating U.S. dollar moved higher on Friday, placing additional pressure on crude oil. The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the greenback versus a basket of six major currencies, cracked the historic 100 barrier for the first time in more than 11 and a half years. The index reached 100.37 in U.S. afternoon trading, as EUR/USA fell toward 1.05.