Brent Oil Drops Below $60 as Libya Adds to Surplus

Oil traded near $60 a barrel in London after the first weekly decline in a month as Libya restarted a crude pipeline after a fire and Oman said it will increase production by as much as possible.

Futures swung between gains and losses after a 2.1 percent drop last week. Oil fields in eastern Libya resumed pumping to Hariga port after a pipeline was repaired, according to state-run National Oil Corp. Oman, the biggest Middle East producer outside of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, plans to raise output to 980,000 barrels a day this year, a ministry official said.

Rising supply is contributing to a global surplus that drove crude into a bear market in 2014. OPEC, whose 12 members ship about 40 percent of the world’s oil, has signaled that it’s prepared to let prices fall to a level that would force record American output to slow. U.S. drillers have idled rigs the past 11 weeks even as Brent recovered this year.

Bloomberg

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