By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com- The oil prices continued to climb, and U.S. crude futures were within cents of $80 bar level on Tuesday. This is because bulls expect that there will be a shortage in winter.

Long-oil producers have now won four consecutive days with the latest rally, which was 1.7%. This rally also occurred a day following OPEC+ producers decided to keep their previous commitment to only incrementally increasing output despite tightening global supplies and worsening inflation.

From its first-ever negative pricing of $40 per barrel in April 2020, U.S. crude’s benchmark settled Tuesday’s trade at $78.93 per barrel, up $1.31 on the day or 1.7%. WTI had reached $79.47, a new seven-year high earlier in this session. US crude oil benchmark gained 63% in this year’s session and has seen a 5% increase over the past four sessions.  

The global benchmark oil price, London-traded crude finished its latest session at $82.56 per bar, an increase of $1.30, or 1.6%.  Brent reached an $83.11 peak during the session. The year-to-date increase is 60%.

Oil prices have been on a tear since OPEC+ — comprising the 13-member Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a group of 10 other producers steered by Russia — decided to stick to plans to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day through April.

Scott Shelton, energy futures broker at ICAP (LON:) in Durham, North Carolina, described the outcome as  a “perfect storm” for oil bears “as OPEC signaled zero interest in adding more than 400 KBD.”

Tuesday’s run-up came just before the release of a weekly snapshot on U.S. inventories from the American Petroleum Institute.

API will release its log of U.S. crude oil, gasoline, and distillate stockspiles for week ending Oct 1 at 4:30PM ET (20:30 GMT). These figures are a prelude to official weekly inventory data from the EIA (U.S Energy Information Administration) due Wednesday. 

Analysts tracked by Investing.com have forecast that fell by 418,000 barrels last week, compared with the previous week’s build of 4.58 million.

Forecasts indicated that inventories could have risen by 279,900 barrels after the increase of 193,000 the week before, which was likely despite the fact that inventory levels were up.

Stockpiles for, including diesel, are likely to have increased by 1.0 million barrels following a gain in 385,000 last week.