Investing.com - Oil prices registered mixed signs in volatile midmorning trade on Monday, as investors continued to weigh the impact from major producers’ decision last week to compensate losses in global output by increasing their production.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 15 cents, or about 0.1%, to $68.66 a barrel by 10:44AM ET (14:44GMT), having traded in a range of $68.16-$69.41 throughout the day.
Meanwhile, Brent crude futures, the benchmark for oil prices outside the U.S., traded up $1.51, or 2.0%, to $73.81, still off session lows of $73.59.
Monday’s volatility followed what had been both barrels’ best day since November 2016 on Friday - with gains of 4.6% and 3.4%, respectively - after OPEC and non-OPEC producers agreed on a modest increase in production from next month, without announcing a clear target for the output increase.
As OPEC explained in the joint press release, its members had exceeded the required level of conformity to the November 30, 2016 agreement to curb production by 1.2 million bpd.
Having reached 152% compliance in May 2018 on their November 2016 agreement to curb production by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), OPEC agreed Friday to strive to drop that compliance to 100%.
The cartel noted that there were no specific allocations for individual members, as some countries that did not have spare capacity would be unable to increase output.
Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC, said on Saturday the move would translate into a nominal output rise of around 1 million bpd.
OPEC and non-OPEC producers have been curbing output by about 1.8 million bpd since January 2017 to prop up oil prices and reduce high global oil stocks.
Meanwhile, a slight drop in domestic drilling activity supported the U.S. benchmark.
U.S. energy companies last week cut one oil rig, the first reduction in 12 weeks, lowering the total rig count to 862, Baker Hughes said in its closely followed report on Friday.
That put the rig count on track for its smallest monthly gain since declining by two rigs in March, with just three rigs added so far in June, although the overall level hit a March 2015 high in the previous week.
In other energy trading, gasoline futures fell 1.1% $2.0305 a gallon by 10:45AM ET (14:45GMT), while heating oil lost 1.4% to $2.0996 a gallon.
Lastly, natural gas futures traded down 0.9% to $2.918 per million British thermal units.