WTI and Brent Crude Sink and Settle Above $45 a Barrel on Friday

Crude oil ended at its lowest level in nearly a week on Friday, with expectations for a rise in OPEC output pressuring prices ahead of a Monday meeting, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, September West Texas Intermediate crude lost $1.15, or 2.5%, to settle at $45.77 a barrel. For the week, the WTI contract saw a loss of nearly 2.1%.

On the London ICE Futures Exchange, September Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell $1.24, or 2.5%, to end trading at $48.06 a barrel—down about 1.7% from a week ago.

OPEC oil ministers will meet on Monday with some other producers who are not bound by the current production curb to explore the opportunity of extending the agreement to the group.

“The market has increasingly lost confidence in the [output] deal’s ability to rebalance the market,” said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric. “Several sources point to June being a particularly weak month for overall compliance, with expectations that July compliance will suffer further.”

August natural gas settled at $2.97 per million British thermal units back on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, natural gas was down 7.3 cents, or 2.4%.