Oil slides

Reuters

London

Oil prices fell one percent on Friday after U.S. crude inventories rose for a seventh week, showing that the market is still struggling to ease oversupply despite many producers´ efforts to rein in production.

U.S. crude stocks rose by 564,000 barrels in the week to Feb. 17, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said, though the increase was less than the 3.5 million barrels expected by analysts.

The continued rise in U.S. inventories comes as members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other producers have cut output.

Their joint compliance with a production-reduction deal reached at the end of last year was around 86 percent in January, according to OPEC sources quoting results from a technical committee meeting held this week.

Compliance is set to rise even further in coming months as OPEC laggards United Arab Emirates and Iraq have pledged to catch up with their individual targets.