Oil Prices Steady After OPEC+ Pushes Back Output Hike

Oil prices were trading flat on Thursday afternoon, after OPEC+ delayed its planned output increase by three months to April 2025, and extended the full unwind of production cuts by a year until the end of 2026. Brent crude for February delivery rose a marginal 0.06% to trade at $72.35 per barrel at 14.06 ET, while WTI was trading flat at $68.54. The OPEC+ announcement comes days after commodity experts at Standard Chartered predicted that the oil ministers were likely to delay any unwinding of voluntary cuts to the end of Q1 and perhaps even further…