Oil prices ended mixed on Friday to notch a weekly fall, amid growing hopes for restoring the Iran nuclear deal.
The West Texas Intermediate for March delivery lost 69 cents, or nearly 0.8 percent, to settle at 91.07 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for April delivery increased 57 cents, or 0.6 percent, to close at 93.54 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
For the week, the U.S. crude benchmark dropped 2.2 percent, while Brent saw a roughly 1 percent decline.
The slide came amid reports that an agreement was supposedly imminent in the nuclear talks with Iran, according to experts.
"The prospect of Iranian oil exports returning to the market is likely to weigh on forward contracts with maturity dates in the second half of the year, which suggests that the already record-high time spreads will widen even further," Carsten Fritsch, energy analyst at Commerzbank Research, said Friday in a note.