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By Bloomberg

Oil traded near $60 a barrel in London after the first weekly decline in a month as Libya restarted a crude pipeline after a fire and Oman said it will increase production by as much as possible.

Futures swung between gains and losses after a 2.1 percent drop last week. Oil fields in eastern Libya resumed pumping to Hariga port after a pipeline was repaired, according to state- run National Oil Corp. Oman, the biggest Middle East producer outside of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, plans to raise output to 980,000 barrels a day this year, a ministry official said.

Rising supply is contributing to a global surplus that drove crude into a bear market in 2014. OPEC, whose 12 members ship about 40 percent of the world’s oil, has signaled that it’s prepared to let prices fall to a level that would force record American output to slow. U.S. drillers have idled rigs the past 11 weeks even as Brent recovered this year.

“It’s very much a production- or supply-driven story right now in oil,” Mark Pervan, the head of commodity research at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Melbourne, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The demand side is actually quite flat and we’re seeing a lot of supply in the system.”

Brent for April settlement was at $60.45 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange, up 23 cents, at 4 p.m. Sydney time. The contract climbed 1 cent to $60.22 on Friday. The European benchmark crude traded at a premium of $9.50 to West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. marker grade.

Crude Supply

WTI for April delivery was 15 cents higher at $50.96 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The March contract expired on Friday after decreasing 82 cents to $50.34. The volume of all futures traded was about 18 percent below the 100-day average.

Libya, OPEC’s smallest producer, pumped 300,000 barrels a day in January, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Workers fixed a pipeline linking the Mesla and Sarir fields to Hariga that was shut after a blaze probably caused by sabotage, Mohamed Elharari, a National Oil spokesman, said by phone from Tripoli.

Oman is boosting output as the global price rout is over, Salim Al Aufi, an undersecretary at the Oil and Gas Ministry, said in an interview in Muscat on Sunday. The nation’s production this year will be 4 percent higher than in 2013, according to data from BP Plc.

Rig Count

The number of rigs targeting oil in the U.S. shrank by 37 to 1,019 last week, data from Baker Hughes Inc. showed on Friday. That’s the fewest in service since July 2011. Drillers have idled 556 machines since Dec. 5, a 35 percent reduction.

United Steelworkers plans to restart talks this week to resolve a labor dispute amid the nation’s largest strike since 1980, according to two people familiar with the talks. The union, representing workers at more than 200 refineries, fuel terminals, pipelines and chemical plants across the U.S., has rejected seven contract offers from Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which is bargaining on behalf of companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.

The work stoppage, which started Feb. 1 at nine sites from California to Texas, has expanded to 12 refineries and 3 other facilities. A deal would end a strike at plants that account for almost 20 percent of the country’s refining capacity.