WTI extends slide to four-week low as US crude stocks rise; focus shifts to OPEC+ meeting

• WTI falls for a fourth consecutive session, extending the pullback from last Friday's near two-month high.
• US Crude inventories rose 1.79M barrels last week, exceeding forecasts and reversing the prior week's draw.
• Market attention shifts to the OPEC+ online meeting on Sunday.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude Oil continues to lose ground for a fourth consecutive day on Wednesday, extending the downside correction that began after last Friday's surge to the highest level since August 4. At the time of writing, WTI is trading around $61.67, somewhat stabilizing after briefly slipping to a four-week low, still down nearly 1.0% on the day.

The latest leg lower was reinforced by a bearish set of weekly inventory figures from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), which showed that Crude Oil inventories rose by 1.792 million barrels in the week ending September 26, topping market expectations for a 1.5 million-barrel build and reversing the previous week's draw of 0.607 million barrels.

The bearish tone was compounded by the broader breakdown of the report, which revealed that gasoline inventories increased by about 1.8 million barrels and distillate fuel stocks climbed by roughly 0.6 million barrels.

The inventory-driven selloff came on top of recent Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) supply headlines that have unsettled traders. Earlier this week, reports suggested the group was considering a much larger-than-expected output hike for November -- as high as 400,000 to 500,000 barrels per day -- raising fears of oversupply at a time of fragile demand.

However, OPEC subsequently pushed back against those reports, calling them "inaccurate and misleading," while its Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) on Wednesday stressed the importance of compliance with existing quotas and urged members that overproduced in previous months to compensate in the coming months.

Market attention is now shifting to the online OPEC+ meeting scheduled for Sunday, where an eight-country panel will review current market conditions and discuss the production outlook for November.