oil futures saw strong gains thursday bouncing back on expectations the organization of the petroleum exporting countries and its allies would resist pressure from the biden administration and to speed up production increases but the upside could be limited by the prospect the us and other consumers could tap strategic oil reserves analysts said west texas intermediate crude for december delivery cl00 clz21 rose 176 or 22 to 8262 a barrel on the new york mercantile exchange january brent crude brn00 brnf22  the global benchmark was up 177 or 22 at 8376 a barrel on ice futures europe reuters citing opec sources reported thursday that the group was likely to stick to its plan to boost output by 400000 barrels a day in december sticking to an earlier timetable for unwinding production cuts put in place in response to the covid19 pandemic president joe biden earlier this week criticized saudi arabia and russia for not doing more to boost production and other consuming countries have also pressed for a more aggressive boost as oil trades near multiyear highs but that “might not be the end of the discussion” said robert yawger executive director of energy futures at mizuho “there is speculation that major oil consumer nations will open their strategic petroleum reserves if opec does not play nice on thursday” he said in a note  the us strategic petroleum reserve was holding 6125 million barrels of crude oil according to wednesday’s weekly energy information administration report he noted while china has the second most crude in its reserve with japan and south korea rounding out the top four