Investing.com - Crude oil prices edged higher on Tuesday, supported by ongoing supply disruptions in the North Sea, although concerns over rising U.S. production levels continued to limit gains.
The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude January contract was up 17 cents or about 0.30% at $57.38 a barrel by 09:50 a.m. ET (13:50 GMT).
Elsewhere, Brent oil for February delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London was up 12 cents or about 0.19% at $63.52 a barrel.
Supply disruptions in the North Sea after the Forties pipeline was unexpectedly shut down last week continued to lend support to the commodity.
But gains were limited after a government forecast published on Monday warned that shale production will rise to a record in January.
Fears that rising U.S. output would dampen OPEC’s efforts to rid the market of excess supplies have been recently weighing on sentiment, according to market participants.
The producer group, along with some non-OPEC members led by Russia, agreed last week to extend current oil output cuts for a further nine months until the end of 2018.
The deal to cut oil output by 1.8 million barrels a day (bpd) was adopted last winter by OPEC, Russia and nine other global producers. The agreement was due to end in March 2018, having already been extended once.
Elsewhere, gasoline futures were up 0.33% at $1.678 a gallon, while natural gas futures rose 0.29% to $2.752 per million British thermal units.