The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) revealed on Wednesday that crude inventories declined by 6.718 million barrels in the week ended June 25, following a tumble of 7.614 million barrels in the previous week. Economists had forecast a draw of 4.686 million barrels.

At the same time, gasoline stocks increased by 1.522 million barrels, while analysts had expected a fall of 0.886 million barrels. Distillate stocks declined by 0.869 million barrels, while analysts had forecast a build of 0.486 million barrels.

Meanwhile, oil production in the U.S. remained unchanged at 11.100 million barrels a day.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.4 million barrels per day last week, decreased by 0.5 million barrels per day from the previous week.

FXStreet reports that ahead of the highly-anticipated OPEC and its allies (OPEC+) meeting on July 1, analysts at Goldman Sachs Commodities Research said more oil production is needed from the alliance to balance the market by 2022.

"...we expect OPEC+ to remain tactical in its output hikes with downside risks to global supply elsewhere pointing to a more robust outlook for crude and the upstream sector than petroleum products and the downstream sector.”

“See a base case of 0.5 mbpd supply increase from OPEC+ producers for consecutive months when the group meets on July 1 to discuss the threat of the Delta COVID variant, the potential return of Iran production and still slow shale response.”