Investing.com - Oil prices inched higher on Monday, adding to the strong weekly rally seen last week, while Saudi Arabia and Russia promised increased compliance with their agreement to cut production.
Russian energy minister Alexander Novak promised on Sunday that Moscow will become fully compliant with its agreed output cut over the coming weeks, in an apparent response to suggestions that the country had been slow to shoulder its responsibilities under its deal on output restraint with OPEC.
“As for the target output level that forms part of the signed agreement, we plan to reach those figures by the end of March (or) beginning of April," Novak said. "This is earlier than in the same period two years ago by about one month."
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate crude futures inched up 2 cents, or 0.03%, at $58.84 a barrel by 9:36 AM ET (13:36 GMT), adding to a 4.3% increase last week.
Meanwhile, Brent crude futures, the benchmark for oil prices outside the U.S., edged forward 6 cents, or 0.09%, to $67.22, adding to a 2.1% rise last week.
In contrast to Russia, OPEC's de-facto leader Saudi Arabia has cut output by more than the 2018 agreement required to keep global inventories from rising. The kingdom’s energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said on Sunday he was optimistic about continued commitment to the so-called "OPEC+" agreement but warned that balancing oil markets was far from done as inventories were still high.
“I am obviously optimistic that implementation of our OPEC+ agreement will improve, it’s already strong by historical standards," Falih said.
Meanwhile, data on Friday from energy services firm Baker Hughes showed that the number of active rigs drilling for oil in the U.S., an indicator of future output, fell for a fourth straight week.
Though the reading last week dropped by just one to 833, the continued downward trend helps ease concerns that escalating production stateside, already near record highs of 12.1 million bpd, would offset OPEC+’s efforts to rebalance the market.
In other energy trading, gasoline futures advanced 0.37% to $1.8645 a gallon by 9:39 AM ET (13:39 GMT), while heating oil dropped 0.33% to $1.9613 a gallon.
Lastly, natural gas futures traded up 1.43% to $2.835 per million British thermal unit.