Crude oil prices were steady Friday morning after falling sharply earlier in the week.
U.S. storage facilities have little room to house the surplus of oil being produced domestically, with the EIA reporting record inventories for weeks in a row.
Baker Hughes will release its oil rig count this afternoon. U.S. drillers have been adding rigs at a furious pace just as OPEC and Russia have started to comply with output reductions.
OPEC has achieved 94 percent compliance with its supply quotas, according to reports.
WTI light sweet crude oil was up 1 penny at $52.61 a barrel, at the lower end of a stubborn trading range that has kept prices below $55.
Meanwhile, traders anticipate Fed Chair Janet Yellen will make the case for an imminent rate hike when she speaks this afternoon. That's boosting the dollar at oil's expense.
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Market Analysis
May 01, 2026 15:54 ET Central banks dominated the economics news flow this week with almost all major ones announcing their latest policy decisions and many boosted expectations for a rate hike in June. In other news, several countries released the preliminary data for first quarter economic growth. In the U.S., comments by Fed Chair Jerome Powell were also in focus as his term ends this month.