Peter Nurse   

Investing.com — Oil prices edged lower from elevated levels Tuesday, ahead of the release of the latest snapshot of U.S. supply and as traders focus on this week’s OPEC+ meeting.

Futures fell 0.7% to $83.44 per barrel at 8:25 am ET (1333 GMT) and 0.7% to $84.09 per barrel at 8:30 AM EDT (1325 GMT). Last week’s Nymex contract reached a record seven year high, and Brent contracts hit an all-time high of three years.

U.S. The price of gasoline RBOB Futures was down 0.6% to $2.3955 per gallon.

After the surge in oil prices last week and post-pandemic rebounding demand around the world, traders have taken some profits Tuesday. 

Attention is firmly fixed on Thursday’s meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies including Russia, a group called OPEC+, where these major producers will discuss future supply levels.

These countries have been under pressure to raise their output in order to reduce price rises. A number of producers expressed concern about increasing the supply too rapidly and are expected to continue with their plans to increase supply by 400,000 barrels daily in December.

“Some of the members who have publicly supported the current easing plan in recent days include Angola and Nigeria,” said analysts at ING, in a note. “It makes sense that these two countries would support the more cautious approach. Both have struggled to raise output, and they are both pumping less than their contracted production levels. Therefore, if they can’t increase output, it makes sense to want higher prices.”

Illustrating the difficulties some OPEC+ members are having in increasing supply, even if they wanted to, a Reuters survey found that the group increased output by only 190,000 barrels per day in October, below the 254,000 b/d they could have increased output by under the current  deal. Involuntary outages, and limited production capacity at some small producers were the reasons for this.

The industry group will release its supply report Tuesday night, and it is likely to reveal another increase in crude inventories.