Oil pulls back from multi-year peak after OPEC+ suspends policy meeting

• Financial

On Tuesday, both US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and UK crude oil futures’ prices had curtained a seesaw session deeper into the red inks, extending a latest leg of languid run as investors appeared to have stomached the probable outcomes of a latest OPEC+ decision to call off a policy meet.

In point of fact, in a much-awaited July 1 OPEC+ policy meet, which was expected to boost up oil outputs from August this year, leaders from OPEC+ member states had botched to reach an accord, while the delayed meet was called off on Monday following a fresh spat between the OPEC-kingpin Saudi and United Arab Emirates, as Emirati Ministers had rejected a proposal to extend output curbs at least until end-2022, however had agreed to boost productions up to 2 million bpd by end-2021.

Surprisingly, shortly after the OPEC+ policy meet had been called off, oil prices had momentarily perked up, but prices retreated late on Monday amid fresh investors’ concerns that a catastrophic conflict of interest among OPEC+ members would likely to open up an opportunistic window for a slew of national producers to open up their taps to exploit a multi-year high oil prices.

Oil prices fall as market uncertainty intensifies

Citing statistics, in the day’s commodity market closure, US West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures’ prices had wrapped up the day 2.4 per cent lower to $73.36 after spiking to the strongest since November 2014 later last week, while UK crude contracts tumbled 3.4 per cent to settle down at $74.53 per barrel after hitting an intra-session peak of $77.88, the highest level since October 2018.

Meanwhile, referring to a growing grudge among market participants about a likely UAE move to add superfluous barrels into the market while prodding other OPEC member states to pursue a similar footprint, a director of energy futures at Mizuho, Bob Yawger said, “The market is concerned that the UAE will step in and unilaterally add barrels and other people in OPEC will follow suit. ”