Brent oil prices above $62 at week beginning Nov. 20

- Brent crude price reaches $62.60 per barrel while WTI sees $56.71 on Monday

International benchmark Brent crude traded at $62.60 per barrel at 07.14 GMT on Monday.

American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) reached $56.71 barrel at the same time.

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said crude oil inventories and production in the U.S. increased last week.

Crude oil production in the U.S. rose by 25,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 9.64 million bpd for the week ending Nov. 10, the EIA said. This was the fourth consecutive week that crude production rose in the country.

At the same time, the number of oil rigs in the U.S. remained unchanged at 739 for the week ending Nov. 10, oilfield services company Baker Hughes data showed Friday. With that result, the number of total rigs in the U.S.' oil industry increased twice in the past seven weeks.

With no change in the oil rig count data last week, crude oil prices this week showed a small increase.

The expectations that OPEC producers and Russia would extend their production cut agreement beyond March 2018 have positively affected crude oil prices over the past two weeks.

However, the IEA's latest report, which showed that oil demand would decrease this year and in 2018, caused a downward pressure on prices.

The IEA lowered its demand growth estimate for 2018 by 200,000 barrels in its monthly oil market report.

By Gulsen Cagatay

Anadolu Agency

energy@aa.com.tr