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• WTI price gains ground to near $62.15 in Tuesday’s early Asian session. 
• OPEC+ decided to add 137,000 bpd in October, a smaller increment than they’d scheduled for the previous two months.
• Traders await the API weekly crude oil stock report, which is due later on Tuesday. 

West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the US crude oil benchmark, is trading around $62.15 during the early Asian trading hours on Tuesday. The WTI edges higher after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) decided to slow the pace of production hikes compared to previous months.

OPEC+ has agreed to further raise oil production from October as its leader, Saudi Arabia, pushes to regain market share. The group decided to raise output by 137,000 barrels per day from October. This increase is significantly lower than the previous hikes of about 555,000 barrels per day in August and September and 411,000 barrels per day in June and July.

Furthermore, expectations of a tighter supply due to potential new US sanctions on Russia provide some support to the WTI price. Ukrainian officials said on Sunday that Russia carried out its largest air attack of the war on Ukraine, setting the main government building on fire in central Kyiv and killing at least four people, including an infant. US President Donald Trump said over the weekend that the administration is prepared to move to a second phase of sanctions targeting Russia or its oil buyers.

Oil traders will keep an eye on the American Petroleum Institute (API) weekly crude oil stock report, which will be published later on Tuesday. If the data shows an unexpected rise in crude inventories, this could indicate weaker demand and might cap the upside for the WTI price in the near term.

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