London — Oil prices fell on Friday after US crude inventories rose for a seventh week, showing the market is still struggling to ease oversupply despite many producers’ efforts to rein in output. US crude stocks rose by 564,000 barrels in the week to February 17, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), although the gain was below analysts’ expectations for an increase of 3.5-million barrels. The continued rise in US inventories comes as members of oil cartel Opec and other producers have cut output. Their joint compliance with a production-reduction deal reached at the end of last year was about 86% in January, according to Opec sources quoting results from a technical committee meeting held this week. The US, which is not part of the deal, continues to ramp up production. Analysts at ING said they expected US output to keep rising as prices remained strong enough to encourage further drilling. Benchmark Brent crude oil was down 48c at $56.10 a barrel at 9.08am GMT...
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