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U.S. futures on Friday looked to add to weekly losses, pushing the commodity towards a 10th straight fall and into the market,
On Thursday, U.S. crude benchmark's descended into a bear market, usually defined as a drop of at least 20% from a recent peak, ending its longest bull market since early 2015.
In Friday dealings, West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery
CLZ8, -0.63%
was down 73 cents, or 1.2%, at $ 59.94 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, poised for the lowest front-month contract since mid-February, according to FactSet data.
Read: The oil rum just became a bear market for U.S. crude
January Brent crude
LCOF9, -0.58%
also fell 88 cents, or 1.3%, to reach $ 69.78 in barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Brent oil was down more than 19% from its recent October peak and flirting with a bear market. A settlement of $ 69,032 would mark Brent's entry into a bear market.
For the week, WTI was set to drop 5.1%, while Brent crude was poised for a 4.1% decline, according to FactSet data.
The front-month WTI contract has so far posted declines in each of the last nine sessions. If it ends lower on Friday, that will mark the 10th consecutive decline and the longest skid for the contract since a similar stretch of July 18, 1984 to July 31, 1984, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
"The declines we have seen in the last several weeks," Matt Cook, S & P Global Platts, associate director for the American crude oil and fuel oil market , told MarketWatch. "We've seen U.S. crude inventories build for the past seven weeks."
"Market structure flipped into contango back in mid-October, which implies that the market is well-supplied for the moment," Cook added. In contango, where can we encourage traders to store oil.
Looking forward, investors will be awaiting data at 1 pm Eastern Time from Baker Hughes
BHGE, + 0.09%
as a measure of the outlook for crude production. Last week, the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil edged down by 1 to 874 rigs, after rising for three weeks in a row.
Overall, crude output in Saudi Arabia, Russia and the U.S. had climbed ahead of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian energy sector, which were expected to contribute to overall oil supplies. The sanctions started this week, but the U.S. granted eight countries temporary waivers-allowing them to continue buying Iranian oil.
The Energy Information Administration on Wednesday reported that U.S. production climbed by 400,000 barrels to a record 11.6 million barrels a day for the week ended Nov. 2.
A committee consisting of members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and some of its oil-producing allies will meet in Abu Dhabi over the weekend ahead of a key meeting on Dec. 6 in Vienna.
S & P Global Platts reported Thursday that the Joint OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee 1, 2017 between members and nonmembers, may recommend a 1 million barrel-per-day production cut to make up for boost production from Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco's CEO, Amin Nasser, is scheduled to meet in Moscow on Friday with his counterpart at Rosneft, Igor Sechin, among other top oil executives.
Iran sanctions had previously served to boost oil prices, with an increase in the size of the country. The U.S. announcement of waivers only added to worries about oversupply.
OPEC has been increasing the production of the Iran OPEC meeting in an effort to make up for Iran barrels. Problem is, Iran barrels did not disappear under the Trump plan, despite all the bark about zero exports, "wrote Robert Yawger, director of energy at Mizuho USA, in a Friday report.
"So … OPEC production is super-sized, Iran barrels are still flowing. And EIA storage packs seven storage builds on top of an already oversupplied market! He wrote.
Saudi Arabia's production rose to 10.67 million barrels a day in October, according to an S & P Global Platts survey Wednesday. That was the most in the 30-year history of the survey.
Russia's crude production rose to a post-Soviet record of 11.4 million barrels a day in October, according to Bloomberg.
The Wall Street Journal, citing the people of the world, wrote on Thursday that Saudi Arabia's top government-funded think tank is studying the possible effects of a breakup of OPEC.
Read: Saudi Arabia ponders a future without OPEC
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