Crude oil futures plunged on Monday as an output report showed rising production by OPEC members, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, September West Texas Intermediate crude oil dropped $1.23, or 2.5%, to settle at $47.59 a barrel.
On the London ICE Futures Exchange, October Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell $1.37, or 2.6%, to end trading at $50.73 a barrel.
In a report Monday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said it expects to see a climb of 117,000 barrels a day in September to 6.149 million barrels a day.
“This is not the report that [OPEC] wanted to see,” said James Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics. “It is far more optimistic than the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook, which only anticipated a 10,000 [barrel-per-day] increase in September lower-48 [states] onshore production.”
The report also showed that the number of drilled but uncompleted wells climbed by 208 in July from June to 7,059.
Monday’s drop in oil prices comes after both OPEC and the International Energy Agency said last week that oil production from the cartel had risen in July to nearly 33 million barrels a day.
Meanwhile, September natural gas dropped by 2.4 cents, or 0.8%, to settle at $2.959 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
