Investing.com - Oil prices continued their march higher in North American trade on Tuesday, extending gains into a second session after OPEC producers pledged additional support measures to help speed the rebalancing of global supply and demand.
The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude September contract was at $47.17 a barrel by 8:35AM ET (1235GMT), up 85 cents, or around 1.8%.
Elsewhere, Brent oil for September delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London jumped 87 cents to $49.47 a barrel.
Oil prices finished higher on Monday as fresh pledges from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria to respectively pull back on exports and output boosted sentiment.
At an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting on Monday, Saudi Arabia announced it would cut August exports to 6.6 million barrels a day, which would be a million less than a year earlier.
In addition, Nigeria, which has been exempt from this year’s OPEC-led production-cut deal, pledged to cap output once it reaches a level of 1.8 million barrels a day. The cartel’s latest data put the country’s output at around 1.7 million.
In May, OPEC and some non-OPEC producers, such as Russia, extended an agreement to slash 1.8 million barrels per day in supply until March 2018.
So far, it has had little impact on global inventory levels due to rising supply from producers not participating in the accord, such as Libya and Nigeria, as well as a relentless increase in U.S. shale production.
Investors now looked ahead to weekly data from the U.S. on stockpiles of crude and refined products.
Industry group the American Petroleum Institute is due to release its weekly report at 4:30PM ET (2030GMT) later on Tuesday. Official data from the Energy Information Administration will be released Wednesday, amid forecasts for an oil-stock drop of around 3.0 million barrels.
Elsewhere on Nymex, gasoline futures for August gained 1.3 cents, or about 0.8%, to $1.570 a gallon, while August heating oil added 2.1 cents to $1.538 a gallon.
Natural gas futures for September delivery ticked up 3.8 cents to $2.920 per million British thermal units.