Oil traders will note the weekend news that OPEC and its allied producers (OPEC+) have agreed to maintain their current oil-output targets despite a recent decline in energy prices.

Sunday's meeting was an important one for the oil industry given the recent moves in the oil price into fresh bearish cycle lows for the end of the year.  West Texas Intermediate has been pressured of late given a deteriorating demand outlook from China and Europe recently agreeing to a price cap for Russian oil that is set to take effect this Monday.

At the meeting on Sunday, OPEC+ has agreed to sustain the 2 million-barrels-per-day cut that was announced in October that had drawn criticism from the Biden administration that regards the cut as a blatant display of siding with Moscow. 

Meanwhile, in response to the Ukraine invasion, G7 nations, the European Union and Australia agreed at the end of last week to cap the price of Russian seaborne oil at $60 per barrel starting on Dec. 5. The Kremlin said this weekend that it would not comply with the price cap.

WTI technical analysis

Meanwhile, WTI is correcting into the Fibonacci scale drawn on the prior bullish leg as follows:

The W-formation is a reversion pattern that tends to see the price drawn towards the neckline in which this case has a confluence with the 50% mean reversion area near $78.50bbls.