Oil up on supply concerns ahead of OPEC meeting

Going forward, the EIA expects the Brent-WTI spread to continue to be the primary factor in the East Coast's domestic crude oil purchases.

OPEC with a group of non-OPEC producers that includes Russian Federation started withholding oil supplies in 2017 to end a global glut and prop up prices.

NYMEX crude is hovering at $70 per barrel, with a gain of almost 18 percent this year, while Brent, which measures the global market, nears the $80 per barrel mark, up almost 19 percent this year.

Oil prices were largely steady in highly volatile trade on Friday, with Brent briefly reaching $80 per barrel, ahead of this weekend's meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC producers to discuss how to counter falling supply from Iran due to USA sanctions.

OPEC and its allies are unlikely to agree to an official increase in crude output when they meet in Algeria this weekend, although pressure is mounting on top producers to prevent a spike in oil prices above $80 a barrel ahead of new USA sanctions on Iran, OPEC sources told Reuters on Thursday. The EIA's latest forecast has Brent prices averaging around $6 a barrel more than WTI this year and next.

Oil futures inched up on Friday amid concerns over supply as US sanctions on Iran's crude exports loom, although calls by US President Donald Trump for lower oilprices dragged.

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Two of OPEC's founding members, Iran and Venezuela, are under sanctions from Washington.

It comes after the development of fracking led to a boom in shale oil production while massively reducing drilling costs.The figures are based on preliminary estimates published by the US Energy Information Administration last week.

In July, the president sent a similar tweet, bemoaning prices at the pump, telling OPEC to "REDUCE PRICING NOW!".Later that month OPEC boosted production by 41,000 to 32.32 million barrels, as noted in OPEC's monthly report. That resulted in large-scale layoffs and cuts to a sector that was booming just the year before.

USA crude inventories rose by 1.2 million barrels to 397.1 million in the week to September 14, according to data released on Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute (API).

"Importantly, 2020 looks to be the first year the industry will experience material, synchronized [capital expenditures] growth since before the downturn", analysts with Morgan Stanley wrote.