Oil prices crept higher today in a modest market effort to reverse a two-week slump that has seen the erosion of earlier gains this year when producers agreed output curbs.
On the London market, benchmark Brent blend crude for March was six cents higher at $18.51 a barrel by around 3.30 p.m. (Irish time).
Activity was limited by the closure of the US market for Martin Luther King Day. Faced with slowing demand, OPEC decided to cut output by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) for six months from January 1st after it obtained assurances from five rival exporters of a 460,000 bpd reduction.
One of the main non-OPEC producers, Norway, said today that the pact to trim output to prop up prices was proving effective and reiterated that the cuts would stay in place until June 30th.
"We believe that the measures have had the expected effect," Norwegian Deputy Oil and Energy Minister Mr Brit Skjelbred told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Oslo.
