Oil Hits $70 As OPEC Minister Hints Of Further Cuts

According to CNBC, Suhail al-Mazrouei, the UAE oil minister and OPEC president, said the alliance between OPEC and non-OPEC producers, such as Russia, could continue beyond the December 2018 deadline in an attempt to stabilise oil markets.

"I am expecting that this group of countries that stood and have become responsible for helping the market to correct, [that] there is a very good chance that they could stick together and put a shape around that alliance," al-Mazrouei told CNBC.

On the news, Brent Crude briefly broke the $70 a barrel mark before returning to its current price of $69.2 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate rose 1.5% to $64.5 a barrel before falling back to $63.5 in early morning trading.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC members agreed to extend their cuts of 1.8m barrels a day until the end of 2018 following a meeting in Vienna on November 2017.

The deal has been agreed to continue to December 2018. However, members will assess their agreement and how it is impacting global stockpiles at the next meeting in June.

The decision to cut its oil supply, which was originally agreed in November 2016, was in response to a fall in global demand following a huge boom in US shale production and OPEC's subsequent decision to flood the market in mid-2014.

US shale production has been on the slide in recent times, further aiding the sharp rise in oil prices with the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reporting crude inventories fell by nearly five million barrels to 419.5 million barrels in the week to 5 January, according to the BBC.

Furthermore, rising tensions in the Middle East over the past six has boosted oil prices with exports from the Kurdistan region falling by 350,000 barrels a day since it voted for independence in September.

al-Mazrouei said: "OPEC will continue to be a strong organisation and I think this phenomena of getting others to join OPEC in their cause of market recovery, and achieving enough to incentivise investments into this industry, is something in which interest is growing."