WTI Crude Oil Forecast: $80.83 as the OPEC+ Rollback Completes

• $80.83 on the 4-hour chart, down 0.33% and trading below every moving average after a sharp break from 87.
• OPEC+ approved a final 188,000 barrel-per-day increase for September, completing the rollback of the 1.65 million barrel voluntary cut.
• 82.11 is the first average overhead and the level that defines whether this is a break or a flush.

Fundamental Analysis: WTI Crude Oil

OPEC+ agreed on 2 August to raise September quotas by 188,000 barrels per day, the last increment in the unwinding of the 1.65 million barrel per day voluntary cut. The group has now returned that entire tranche of supply to the market. Whatever the compliance picture turns out to be in practice, the policy signal is that the producer group is no longer managing the market tighter, and that removes the structural bid that supported prices through the first half of the year.

Geopolitics has moved the same way. Iran and Oman have discussed establishing a temporary joint maritime corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, with Pakistan and Qatar mediating between Washington and Tehran, and US economic pressure proved less aggressive than expected after it stopped short of secondary sanctions on Iran's trading partners. Substantial volumes continue to transit the strait. The risk premium that had been embedded in the price has been steadily discounted.

That leaves a market where both the supply-policy leg and the disruption-risk leg have turned bearish within the same three weeks, which is why the decline from 87 has been as fast as it has. The offset is that a market pricing out geopolitical risk is also a market with little cushion should the diplomacy stall, and Hormuz headlines have historically repriced crude faster than fundamentals do.

Technical Analysis: WTI Crude Oil

The August range was wide and two-sided until it was not. Price bottomed near 74.80 on 6 August, rallied through the middle of the month to a high near 87.40 on 21 August, and then broke down hard, losing roughly seven dollars in four sessions to reach 80.70 at the session low. That decline cut through all four moving averages, which now sit overhead in a tight band and have flipped from support to resistance.

Resistance is 82.11 first, then the cluster of 82.93, 83.31 and 83.65, and reclaiming that band would be the minimum required to argue the break was a flush. Support is the 80.00 handle, then the 13 August swing low near 79.40, with 78.00 beneath that. A close back above 83.65 would invalidate the bearish read by restoring price to the full moving-average stack.

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