The West Texas Intermediate for August delivery lost 1.79 U.S. dollars to settle at 73.37 U.S. dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, the U.S. crude benchmark traded as high as 76.98 dollars a barrel, its highest level since November 2014.
Brent crude for September delivery decreased 2.63 dollars to close at 74.53 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange, after hitting its highest level since 2018.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, collectively known as OPEC+, called off a key meeting on Monday. The meeting was initially set for last Thursday and market participants had anticipated the group would agree to continue to moderately increase output beyond July.
"In the past, dissent within OPEC often sparked massive price slides," "however, the market is interpreting the current failure as meaning that the old agreement, according to which production by the OPEC countries and their allies is to be left unchanged from August until April 2022 after the increase in July, still applies," Eugen Weinberg, energy analyst at Commerzbank Research, said in a note on Tuesday.
He added that in the medium term, the failure of OPEC+ is more likely to do oil prices harm rather than good.
OPEC+ made deep output cuts last year as the pandemic hurt global fuel demand and is restoring production as economic recovery continues in most parts of the world.
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