London — Oil prices fell 1% on Friday after US crude inventories rose for a seventh week, showing that the market is still struggling to ease oversupply, despite many producers’ efforts to rein in production. US crude stocks rose 564,000 barrels in the week to February 17, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said, though the increase was less than the 3.5-million barrels expected by analysts. 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 2016 was about 86% in January, according to Opec sources quoting results from a technical committee meeting held this week. Compliance is set to rise even further in coming months as Opec laggards the United Arab Emirates and Iraq have pledged to catch up with their individual targets. The US, which is not part of the deal, continues to ramp up production. Analysts at ING said they expected US output t...
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