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By Bloomberg

Brent crude traded near a one-month low after erasing this year’s gains while oil in New York held losses before government data that may signal the pace of supply growth in the U.S.

Futures were 0.8 percent higher in London after declining 3.7 percent on Tuesday, while West Texas Intermediate stayed below $50 a barrel for a second day. Crude stockpiles probably increased by 4.75 million barrels through March 6, a Bloomberg News survey showed before a report from the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday. OPEC won’t change its policy at a June meeting unless other producers cut supply first, said Qatar’s former energy minister.

Oil is failing to sustain a rebound this year amid speculation that a global supply glut that drove prices into a bear market in 2014 may worsen. U.S. crude production and inventories have surged to the highest levels in more than three decades, according to the EIA. Output from shale oil will expand at the slowest pace in more than four years in April, it predicted on Monday.

“The market is possibly positioning for more bad news on the U.S. stockpile front,” Ric Spooner, a chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney, said by phone. “The market has been looking forward and waiting for production to drop off. Even so, there’s room for nervousness if the starting point keeps on getting worse in the sense that you have a bigger and bigger inventory to work through.”

2015 Loss

Brent for April settlement was at $56.83 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange, up 44 cents, at 1:51 p.m. Singapore time. It dropped $2.14 to $56.39 on Tuesday, the first time in a month it’s slid into a loss for 2015. The European benchmark crude traded at a premium of $7.93 to WTI.

WTI for April delivery rose as much as 76 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $49.05 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.71 to $48.29 on Tuesday. The volume of all futures traded was about 49 percent below the 100-day average. Prices have decreased 8.2 percent this year.

Crude inventories in the U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, have expanded for eight weeks through Feb. 27 to 444.4 million barrels, according to the EIA, the Energy Department’s statistical arm. That’s the highest level in records dating back to August 1982 and 25 percent above the five-year average for this time of year.

Stockpiles shrank by 404,000 barrels in the week ended March 6, the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday, according to reports on Twitter.

OPEC Policy

WTI will trade at $52.15 a barrel this year versus a February projection of $55.02, the EIA said on Tuesday in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook. Production will climb to 9.35 million a day in 2015, up 50,000 barrels from last month’s estimate. Output was at 9.32 million a day through Feb. 27, the fastest pace in weekly data compiled since January 1983.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries shouldn’t hold an extraordinary meeting without “concrete decision” to change its policy, Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, Qatar’s energy minister from 1992 to 2011, said at the Doha Energy Forum on Tuesday.

OPEC, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil, is scheduled to meet June 5 in Vienna. At a Nov. 27 gathering, its 12 members agreed to maintain their collective output quota at 30 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer, signaled the group’s readiness to let prices drop to a level that would force U.S. supply to slow.

“No big change” in the market is expected by June, Nawal al-Fezaia, Kuwait’s governor to OPEC, told reporters in Doha. Oil is unlikely to fall below $40 a barrel, he said.