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Brent crude oil futures <LCOc1> were at $73.26 per barrel at
1139 GMT, down 52 cents from their last close.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures <CLc1> were
down 48 cents at $67.81 a barrel.
"Looks like OPEC is at it again," Trump wrote in a post on
Twitter.
"With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the
fully loaded ships at sea, Oil prices are artificially Very
High! No good and will not be accepted!"
The United States cannot legally influence oil other than
through releasing oil from its strategic reserves which it has
done occasionally, most recently last year in the wake of
Tropical Storm Harvey.
Both contracts had been trading in positive territory before
Trump's tweet.
Brent and WTI hit their highest levels since November 2014 on
Thursday earlier this week, at $74.75 and $69.56 per barrel
respectively, buoyed by a tightening market and higher demand.
Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih said OPEC and its allies were
still far away from reaching their target and that a drawdown in
oil inventories needed to continue.
OPEC and its allies have been curbing production since 2017,
helping push up prices. The deal to cut is currently scheduled
to expire at the end of 2018.
A technical OPEC and non-OPEC committee meeting in Jeddah on
Thursday, ahead of Friday's ministerial meeting, found that a
global overhang in oil inventories, which the deal has targeted
for eliminating, has virtually disappeared.
"Even if OPEC were to reach its target of reducing oil
inventories to their recent five-year average by the next
official June meeting, Saudi Arabia is driving a strong agenda
to maintain cuts for the balance of 2018," BNP Paribas global
head of commodity market strategy Harry Tchilinguirian told the
Reuters Global Oil Forum.
Firm demand was also giving prices a floor.
"Global oil demand data so far in 2018 has come in line with our
optimistic expectations, with Q1 2018 likely to post the
strongest year-on-year growth since Q4 2010 at 2.55 million
barrels per day," U.S. bank Goldman Sachs said in a note
published late on Thursday.
Beyond OPEC's supply management, crude prices have also been
supported by an expectation that the United States will
re-introduce sanctions on OPEC-member Iran.
"The first key geopolitical issue is the expiration of the
current U.S. waiver of key sanctions against Iran," said
Standard Chartered Bank in a note this week.
(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing
by Susan Fenton)
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