Investing.com - Crude oil prices stayed in the green in Asia on Tuesday ahead of U.S. industry estimates of inventories.
The American Petroleum Institute will release figures late Tuesday on crude and refined product stockpiles to be followed on Wednesday from official data from the U.S. Department of Energy.
U.S. crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange inched up 0.02% to $52.48 a barrel. On London's Intercontinental Exchange, global benchmark Brent crude was last quoted at $55.80 a barrel, up 0.65%.
Overnight, oil prices rose than 18-month high after OPEC and a few of its market rivals reached their first deal since 2001 to reduce output across the globe.
Oil prices at $60 a barrel would be “ideal” for producers as higher levels risk competition from competing commodity supplies from the U.S., Nigeria’s petroleum minister told the media on Monday.
Global oil producers this weekend agreed to reduce output by 558,000 barrels per day, short of the target of 600,000 bpd but still the largest non-OPEC production cut in history.
This deal followed OPEC's Nov. 30 pact to cut output by 1.2 million bpd for six months from Jan. 1. Saudi Arabia will cut around 486,000 bpd to reduce the supply glut that has dispirited markets for years.
Crude futures have rallied sharply, with U.S. oil futures gaining 23% since the middle of last month as optimism that an agreement would be reached started to increase.
Some observers believe market may be irrationally exuberant, given the expectation that various producers would not comply with the cuts, as promised.
If prices move higher than $60 per barrel, Emmanuel Kachikwu, the Nigerian oil minister, said shuttered shale production facilities in the U.S. might come online quickly to compete with oil.