"It is a great New Year present for the whole oil industry," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on the second day of 13th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial meeting.
Crude oil price climbed to 11-month highs boosted by the compromise deal between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, agreed on Tuesday to make additional, voluntary oil output cuts of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in February and March. The new compromise among the 23-nation alliance will run through the end of March.
"We do that with the purpose of supporting our economy, the economies of our colleagues in OPEC+ countries, to support the industry," Saudi Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said.
Apart from that, Geopolitical tensions between Tehran and Seoul over the freezing of Iranian funds in South Korean banks due to US sanctions, a South Korean-flagged tanker was seized in Gulf waters, these increasing tensions also pressured oil prices up.
Moving ahead to the North American session, the investors now await the weekly EIA inventory report on US crude oil stockpiles due later in the day. During the Asian session, the API data showed the US crude inventories fell by 1.7 million barrels in the week to January 1st to 491.3 million barrels. At the time of writing, WTI Crude oil and Brent Crude (ICE) futures were trading at around 50.10 and 53.95, respectively.