By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com - Crude prices settled barely changed Tuesday as longs in the market placed their faith on upcoming U.S. government data they believed will show a fourth straight weekly drop in stockpiles.
Aside from the crude inventory numbers due from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday, a meeting of the world’s largest alliance of oil exporters could also help oil bulls.
A panel of the Saudi-steered and Russia-assisted Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies will meet Wednesday to review efforts to roll back some 2 million barrels from production cuts of around 9.6 million barrels per day agreed to in May.
A Reuters report on Monday, quoting two OPEC+ sources, said the group members’ compliance with cuts was seen at around 97% in July.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude futures, settled up unchanged at $42.89 per barrel.
London-traded Brent, the bellwether for global crude prices, closed the New York session up 9 cents, or 0.2%, at $45.46.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration is expected to report a crude stockpile draw of 2.67 million barrels for last week, bringing total draws over the past four weeks to just 25 million barrels.
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, will provide a snapshot of its own crude and other inventory data for last week at 4:30 PM ET (20:30 GMT) on Tuesday. The API data usually serves as precursor to the EIA numbers.