Investing.com - Oil prices continued higher in European trade on Tuesday, extending gains into a second session after OPEC producers pledged further support measures to help speed the rebalancing of global supply and demand.
The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude September contract was at $46.62 a barrel by 3:40AM ET (0740GMT), up 28 cents, or around 0.6%.
Elsewhere, Brent oil for September delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London tacked on 26 cents to $48.87 a barrel.
Oil prices finished higher on Monday after Saudi Arabia pledged to make deep cuts to its crude exports in August.
Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, will limit exports to 6.6 million barrels a day in August, energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said after a meeting with fellow crude producers on Monday.
Meanwhile, Nigeria, which has been exempt from this year’s OPEC-led production-cut deal, pledged to take part in cuts once it reaches a production level of 1.8 million barrels a day. The cartel’s latest data put the country’s output at around 1.7 million.
In May, OPEC and some non-OPEC producers, such as Russia, extended an agreement to slash 1.8 million barrels per day in supply until March 2018.
So far, it has had little impact on global inventory levels due to rising supply from producers not participating in the accord, such as Libya and Nigeria, as well as a relentless increase in U.S. shale production.
Investors now looked ahead to weekly data from the U.S. on stockpiles of crude and refined products.
Industry group the American Petroleum Institute is due to release its weekly report at 4:30PM ET (2030GMT) later on Tuesday. Official data from the Energy Information Administration will be released Wednesday, amid forecasts for an oil-stock drop of around 3.0 million barrels.
Elsewhere on Nymex, gasoline futures for August was little changed at $1.559 a gallon, while August heating oil added half a cent to $1.522 a gallon.
Natural gas futures for September delivery ticked up 2.0 cents to $2.902 per million British thermal units.