WTI bulls take charge into $70 area

• WTI rallies over 2% on the day supported on inventories drop. 
• OPEC+ group reaffirmed plans to raise quotas by 0.4 million barrels monthly.

Spot West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil rose 2% on Thursday.

By the Wall Street close, the price was near $69.70 after travelling between a low of $67.88 and $70.59 on the day.

An outsized drop in US inventories reported the prior day offset the OPEC+ decision to go ahead with a 400,000-barrel per day supply increase.

OPEC+ group reaffirmed plans to raise quotas by 0.4 million barrels monthly, though the group will meet again next month to ratify another hike as it looks to slowly return output to pre-pandemic levels in 2022.

Meanwhile, a 7.2-million barrel drop in US oil inventories fell to the lowest since September 2019, reported by the US Energy Information Administration.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement on Thursday said 1.7-million bpd of output remained shut in, up from 1.46-million bpd a day earlier.

Additionally, the Gulf of Mexico production and refining remained constrained following Hurricane Ida.

In other related news, Iran’s new government is also suggesting that nuclear talks may be delayed

Analysts at TD securities explained that this ''argues that this source of additional supply may struggle to come back as quickly as anticipated.''

''In fact, several OPEC nations are struggling to raise their output, contributing to rising energy supply risks.''