Investing.com -- Crude futures pared earlier gains but still remained near monthly highs, as the dollar firmed on Friday and oil rig counts throughout the U.S. fell mildly last week to hit a fresh record-low.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, WTI crude for June delivery traded in a broad range between $43.11 and $44.45 a barrel, before settling at $43.77, up 0.59 or 1.37% on the session. U.S. crude futures have responded to a stretch of four consecutive losses from last week with a subsequent four-day winning streak dating back to Tuesday's session. On the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), brent crude for June delivery wavered between $44.30 and $45.89 a barrel, before closing at $45.13, up 0.60 or 1.35% on the session.
Both WTI and Brent ended the week near 2016-yearly highs after surging at least 4% over the last five days. The latest upswing is viewed as somewhat of a surprise by analysts, following Sunday's failure by 18 major producers to come terms on a comprehensive agreement, which could have resulted in an output freeze among OPEC and Non-OPEC producers. The collapse in talks, however, was accompanied by a three-day worker strike in Kuwait, which bolstered oil prices worldwide.
The spread between the U.S. and international benchmarks of crude stood at $1.36, above Thursday's level of $1.28 at the close of trading.
Oil prices worldwide are up by more than 40% since falling to 12-year lows in mid-February. Crude futures have now closed higher in each of the last three weeks.
On Friday afternoon, oil services firm Baker Hughes said in its weekly rig count report that U.S. oil rigs last week fell by eight to 343. The domestic oil rig count in the U.S. has now fallen in 15 of the last 16 weeks. Over the last year, oil rigs nationwide have declined by 360 and are down by approximately 1,600 since the height of the Financial Crisis. Meanwhile, gas rigs inched down by one to 88, pulling the combined rig count to 431, down by nine on the week.
Any considerable declines in the domestic rig count typically provide lagging indicators that U.S. production is about to level off.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Wednesday that U.S. production fell by 24,000 bpd to 8.953 million barrels per day last week, dropping to a fresh 18-month low. Despite the recent upturn, crude prices are still down by more than 50% from their level in June, 2014 when they peaked at $115 a barrel.
While some analysts expect Non-OPEC production growth to fall this year by its highest amount in 25 years, global supply still outstrips demand by more than 1 million barrels per day. Earlier this week, French investment bank Natixis said it expect U.S. production to fall by more than 0.5-0.6 million bpd this year if prices remain below $50 a barrel.
"We would expect producers in the US taking every opportunity to aggressively hedge as soon as there is opportunity when oil prices recover for short periods of time due to either outages or geopolitical risks,"said Natixis analyst Abhishek Deshpande in a report.
"With cash-flow negative, there is only so long before we would see more bankruptcies, along with market consolidation and increased M&A," Deshpande added. "On one hand, there is the increased likelihood of US production declining slightly faster than anticipated in our analysis – perhaps helping markets balance structurally – but it would still take until the end of 2016 or even early 2017 for that to happen."
The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the strength of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, surged more than 0.5% to an intraday high of 95.15, its highest level in a week. The index is still down more than 1.5% over the last two months.
Dollar-denominated commodities such as crude become more expensive for foreign purchasers when the dollar appreciates.