Crude oil futures rebounded on Friday — making up ground for a near 5% loss from Thursday — as investors reconciled their disappointment in OPEC’s less aggressive production cut, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
July West Texas Intermediate crude added 90 cents, or 1.8%, to settle at $49.80 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, WTI settled about 1.7% lower.
July Brent crude, the global benchmark, climbed 69 cents, or 1.3%, to end trading at $52.15 a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange. Brent crude was down about 2.7% for the week.
At a meeting in Vienna on Thursday, OPEC renewed an agreement to curb output through March 2018. Some investors were hoping for deeper production cuts.
Oil prices had risen for the past two weeks in anticipation of OPEC’s announcement.
“Oil was up $5 in two weeks and part of that was speculation by some that OPEC would cut production even more,” said James Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics. “So keeping the current production was bearish relative to that expectation.”
Investors have been concerned because stockpiles of oil remain larger than expected amid signs that U.S. shale producers are increasingly able to push down prices even as OPEC members decide to slash output.
Meanwhile, June natural gas, which expired at the session’s end, rose 1.6% to settle at $3.236 per million British thermal units. For the week, natural gas lost about 0.6%. The July contract ended at $3.310, up 1.1%, for the session.