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By Bloomberg

Oil extended gains after rallying the most in more than a week amid speculation that a decline in U.S. drilling will slow production and curb a global supply glut.

Futures rose as much as 1.3 percent in New York and are little changed for the week. Apache Corp. is cutting its oil- drilling rigs by 70 percent while Total SA joins companies including BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc in reducing spending. Venezuela, Ecuador and Russia are committed to strengthening the market, Venezuelan Oil Minister Asdrubal Chavez said on Twitter.

Oil is recovering from the lowest levels in almost six years as U.S. drillers cut the number of rigs in service to the fewest since December 2011. Crude will rebound in the second half of this year as low prices slow supply growth and stimulate demand, while the potential for OPEC to support the market “should not be ignored,” according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“Oil is starting to look beyond the glut,” Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group in Chicago, said by e-mail. “Against a backdrop of massive spending cuts and rig counts, oil could make a big comeback.”

West Texas Intermediate for March delivery increased as much as 66 cents to $51.87 a barrel and was at $51.71 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 1:33 p.m. Singapore time. The contract climbed $2.37 to $51.21 on Thursday. The volume of all futures traded was about 8 percent below the 100-day average. Prices are up 2 cents this week after two weeks of gains.

Idled Rigs

Brent for April settlement rose as much as 64 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $59.92 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The March contract expired on Thursday after adding $2.39 to $57.05. The European benchmark crude traded at a premium of $7.16 to WTI for the same month.

Houston-based Apache, among the biggest operators in the Permian basin in Texas, will reduce its rig count by the end of this month, it said in a statement. Explorers in the U.S. cut the number of machines in service to 1,140 through Feb. 6, the ninth week of decreases, according to Baker Hughes Inc., an oilfield services company.

Total will cut spending and curtail exploration this year, the Courbevoie, France-based company said on Thursday. Europe’s second-largest oil firm will trim investment to $23 billion to $24 billion, compared with $26 billion in 2014, and reduce the budget for exploration by 30 percent to less than $1.9 billion.

U.S. Supply

“One of the contributors to the rise around this mid- session might be the failure of the oil to fall after such a large rally yesterday,” Michael McCarthy, a chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney, said by phone. “That rally is all the more stunning after an increase in U.S. supplies was confirmed by the inventory numbers on Wednesday.”

Crude inventories and production in the U.S., the world’s biggest oil consumer, surged to the highest levels in more than three decades last week, according to the Energy Information Administration. Stockpiles expanded to 417.9 million barrels through Feb. 6, the most in records dating back to August 1982, the Energy Department’s statistical arm said.

Production accelerated to 9.23 million barrels a day, the highest level in weekly EIA data that started in January 1983. The nation’s oil boom has been driven by a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which has unlocked shale formations from Texas to North Dakota.

WTI may drop next week, a Bloomberg News survey shows. Twenty-one of 39 analysts and traders, or 54 percent, forecast futures will fall through Feb. 20 while eight respondents predict a price advance.