OPEC oil ministers expressed optimism about their strategy of pumping more crude oil and fighting for market share, amid expectations they will stick to their production target when they meet at the end of the week.

The top oil officials of Iraq and Venezuela said on Wednesday that $75 to $80 a barrel was now a "fair" price for oil, reflecting an emerging consensus on a possible equilibrium for volatile markets

U.S. shale oil producers, having weathered the worst price plunge in their industry's brief history, now face a dilemma: whether to stay in a defensive crouch after slashing their rig fleets, or start drilling more wells to capture a partial recovery in prices.

LNG is expected to surpass iron ore as the second most valuable physical commodity after oil this year, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs, who predict it will top $120bn.

OPEC, which controls a third of the global oil market, and Russia, which produces another 12 percent, are unlikely to reverse their output strategy.

Through a series of deals with Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company, Trafigura exported almost 9m barrels of crude in April, worth more than $500m, according to port data compiled by Nefte Compass, an industry publication.

At the oil giant’s annual meeting on Wednesday in Dallas, CEO Rex Tillerson gave a stay-the-course outlook for the company, which has seen profits decline recently with lower prices for crude oil.

Crude oil prices are still about half their value compared with a year ago, but the now prolonged slump is unfolding such that another rise could be on the horizon

OPEC supply is expected to increase by 0.2-0.3 million barrels per day (bpd) between now and end-3Q2015, analysts of the US JP Morgan bank said in a report, obtained by Trend.

Millions of barrels of untapped oil that U.S. shale drillers discovered during the boom years are about to disappear from their inventories.