By Neanda Salvaterra, Jenny Hsu and Timothy Puko 

Crude prices inched lower Monday, weighed down by investor skepticism that major oil producers will extend a deal to curtail global supply beyond June.

Light, sweet crude for May settled down 24 cents, or 0.5%, at $47.73 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Its intraday low of $47.08 a barrel was within 10 cents of a low dating back to late November, but it pared losses in the late morning.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, lost 5 cents, or 0.1%, to $50.75 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Both benchmarks have lost ground in five of six sessions.

Over the weekend, a monitoring committee that oversees the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' compliance with a deal to cut global production by 1.2 million barrels a day issued a statement directing oil producers to "review the oil market conditions," regarding the possible extension of the cuts. Several OPEC members announced support for an extension.

Market participants may have expected the committee to immediately recommend an extension of the supply cut amid rising global inventories and soft oil prices. OPEC's ability to reign in its own high production, and counteract rising inventories and output in the U.S. are in question, according to the Chicago brokerage iiTrader.

"Maybe the committee realized, as we have stated, how catastrophic it will be for the market to begin talking about further cuts and fail to follow through," it said in a note to clients Monday. "We remain bearish and believe $40 is in the cards."

The committee will reconvene again in late April to complete their recommendation for a possible extension of OPEC's supply action. The final decision will be taken by the oil cartel on May 25.

The five-member oversight committee also urged OPEC members to fully comply with their pledges to cut oil supply from the market.

"More has to be done," said Kuwaiti Oil Minister Issam A. Almarzooq, chairman of the group's compliance committee, in a speech distributed by OPEC. "We need to see conformity across the board. We assured ourselves -- and the world -- that we would."

The deal, which stipulates OPEC and 11 other outside suppliers cut their cumulative supply by 1.8 million barrels a day in the first six months of this year, was struck late last year after prices had been stuck in a two-year slump.

The pact faced a high degree of skepticism given OPEC members are notorious for turning their backs on production quotas. However, various data indicate compliance levels among signatories has reached 94% so far.

But oil prices have continued to sag. The reason: rising U.S. production.

Crude production in the U.S. has been rising steadily since the beginning of the year.

Data shows production there has stayed above the 9-million-barrel mark for the past four weeks. Future production also appears to be well on track. In the week ended March 24, U.S. drillers activated 21 more oil rigs, marking the 10th straight week they have increased, to a total of 652.

Amid rising U.S. production, market participants are increasingly skeptical "that either a rollover of the cuts can be agreed or that it would have a lasting and significant impact on balances," said JBC analysts in a recent report.

That isn't true across the board, however. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sent a note late Sunday saying it didn't think current supply and demand warrants an extension barring sharply slowing demand growth or sharply rebounding production in Libya or Nigeria. OPEC compliance has been high and global economic growth is strong enough to support strong demand growth, the bank's commodity research team said.

"We believe that the rebalancing of the oil market is in fact making progress despite the record high U.S. crude inventories," Goldman analyst Damien Courvalin wrote. "Further, we forecast that OECD inventories on a days of demand cover will reach their 5-year average level by year-end even with OPEC bringing production back online in" the second half of 2017.

Gasoline futures gained 1.41 cents, or 0.9%, to $1.6189 a gallon, highest settlement in a week. Diesel futures gained 0.49 cent, or 0.3%, to $1.5025 a gallon.

Michael Amon contributed to this article

Write to Neanda Salvaterra at neanda.salvaterra@wsj.com, Jenny Hsu at jenny.hsu@wsj.com and Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 27, 2017 15:24 ET (19:24 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.