Oil Holds Gains With US Stockpiles and OPEC Decision in Focus
Brent crude traded above $67 a barrel, with West Texas Intermediate near $66. A slew of inputs are expected in the coming days, from official US inventory data later Wednesday to a jobs report Thursday and an OPEC output decision at the weekend.
The American Petroleum Institute reported a 1.4 million barrel drop for last week at the Cushing oil storage hub — the pricing point for WTI. The decline would be the biggest since January if confirmed by government data, and would bring stockpiles at the hub to their lowest seasonal level since 2005.
Trading activity in crude futures has declined since the truce between Israel and Iran led prices to plunge early last week, with volatility returning to levels seen before the war. Concerns are likely to return to a glut forecast for later this year, with an OPEC meeting this weekend expected to deliver another substantial increase in production quotas.
'Crude oil prices remained roughly unchanged week-on-week as the market focus shifts from the ceasefire in the Middle East to this Sunday's virtual OPEC meeting,' Goldman Sachs analysts including Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby wrote in a note. 'We do not expect a large market reaction if OPEC decides to increase production on Sunday as consensus has already shifted towards this outcome.'
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