Remains Under Pressure After OPEC+ & Inventory Data

Crude futures are lower in Asia-Pac trade on Thursday, adding to Wednesday's losses. After a positive start to the session, WTI and Brent crude futures dipped into negative territory shortly after US trade, with Russia's Novak quoted in IFX as saying the country could raise oil output above the OPEC+ quotas -pressing WTI futures to new weekly lows just above $67/bbl support before recovering some of the losses. . The OPEC+ group agreed to go ahead with the planned 400k bpd increase scheduled for October, wagering that the spread of the delta variant won't derail demand. The downside persisted headed into the weekly DoE crude oil inventories numbers, which showed a far larger draw on headline stockpiles than expected, with a drawdown of over 7mln bbls - twice that of expectations.