NEW YORK — Brent crude slipped below $87 per barrel Tuesday afternoon as OPEC-plus pre-meeting drafts circulated to member capitals carried only modest production-cut scenarios rather than the steeper supply-side interventions some analysts had projected ahead of the cartel’s June 1 Vienna meeting.

The principal Brent contract traded at $86.74 per barrel at 1 p.m. Eastern, down approximately ninety cents from Monday’s close and roughly $1.40 from Friday’s settlement. WTI traded at $83.18, down a comparable amount on the session. The Tuesday-afternoon moves represented the largest two-session decline in the Brent contract since the immediate post-ceasefire period in mid-April.

The draft scenarios, distributed by the OPEC secretariat to member energy ministries over the weekend and reported in commodity-trade press through Monday and Tuesday, outline three principal production options for the June meeting. The first would maintain the current production levels through the third quarter. The second would impose a modest cut of approximately 400,000 barrels per day for the third quarter, distributed across the cartel’s principal producers. The third would impose a deeper cut of approximately 800,000 barrels per day for the same period.

A senior OPEC secretariat official, in remarks delivered Tuesday morning at an industry forum in Vienna, characterized the three scenarios as “the operational range the secretariat has prepared for member consideration” and indicated that the substantive selection among them would occur during the June 1 meeting based on member-state assessments of demand conditions through the third quarter. The official said the secretariat’s own assessment had been calibrated to provide “actionable rather than directional” options for the member states.

The market response to the draft circulation has been driven primarily by the absence of a more aggressive cut option among the three scenarios. Several institutional traders, contacted Tuesday afternoon for background, said the consensus pre-circulation expectation had been for a fourth option carrying a cut of approximately 1.2 million barrels per day for the third quarter, with the absence of that option being read as a signal that the cartel’s substantive preference would land toward the lower end of the scenario range.

A senior Saudi energy-ministry official, in remarks delivered Tuesday morning at a Riyadh policy event, said the kingdom’s substantive preference for the June meeting would be “calibrated to the operational realities of the demand environment through the third quarter” and indicated that the kingdom remained “comfortable” with the current price range. The official did not commit the kingdom to a specific scenario but characterized the substantive policy framework as “supportive of producer-group cohesion.”

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, in remarks delivered Tuesday morning at a Moscow energy forum, said Russia’s position on the June meeting would be “broadly aligned with Saudi Arabia’s position” and indicated that Russia remained “supportive of the substantive direction” represented by the producer-group framework. Novak’s remarks were broadly consistent with previous Russian communications on the cartel’s substantive positioning and did not signal substantive policy departures.

The Aramco institutional-investor roadshow, which moved to Tokyo Tuesday morning, has provided the principal substantive corporate-side commentary on the price environment. A senior Aramco executive, in remarks delivered to institutional-investor counterparts in Tokyo, said the company’s operational planning continued to assume “a stable price range around the current levels” through the third quarter and indicated that the company’s substantive capital-expenditure framework had been calibrated to that planning assumption.

A senior energy analyst at a major U.S. brokerage, in a Tuesday-afternoon client note, said the substantive draft circulation had “moved the consensus forecast” for the June meeting from a 600-800,000 barrel-per-day cut to a 300-500,000 barrel-per-day cut and that the substantive market positioning had adjusted correspondingly. The analyst noted that the substantive Brent contract’s options-market positioning had shifted modestly toward downside protection through the past two sessions.

The substantive demand-side commentary in the OPEC secretariat’s monthly oil-market report, released Tuesday morning, had provided additional substantive context for the draft scenarios. The report’s third-quarter demand projection was revised modestly lower from the April report, with the secretariat citing “continued softness in Chinese refinery runs” and “modest European demand weakness” as the principal substantive factors driving the revision. The fourth-quarter projection was maintained at the April-report level.

The International Energy Agency’s parallel monthly oil-market report, released Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. Paris time, had carried a more substantively conservative demand projection than the OPEC secretariat’s report. The IEA’s third-quarter demand projection was approximately 200,000 barrels per day below the OPEC secretariat’s projection, with the IEA citing “more pronounced demand-side moderation” than the OPEC view. The divergence between the two agencies’ demand projections is broadly consistent with the long-standing pattern of differing methodologies.

A senior IEA official, in a Tuesday-morning briefing at the agency’s Paris headquarters, said the agency’s substantive demand framework reflected “the cumulative pattern of slower-than-projected industrial-sector recovery” across the principal demand centers. The official noted that the agency’s projections would be revised again in the June monthly report based on May data flow.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s substantive demand projection, included in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook released last Tuesday, fell between the OPEC and IEA projections. The administration’s substantive framework reflected what officials characterized as “a balanced reading of the substantive demand signals” through the early second-quarter data flow. The substantive EIA-projected price path for Brent through the third quarter ran in the high-$80 range, broadly consistent with the current price environment.

The Russian crude-export discount to Brent has narrowed to approximately $9 per barrel during the past two weeks, with Asian buyers reporting tighter substantive availability of Russian-origin cargoes. The narrowing reflects the operational normalization of Russian crude logistics following the wartime disruption period and the continued strong substantive Chinese demand for discounted Russian volumes.

The substantive market positioning through the remainder of the week is expected to be substantively shaped by the substantive Wednesday-morning Bloomberg interview with the Saudi energy minister, which had been previewed in pre-meeting commentary as the substantive Saudi public statement of the kingdom’s substantive June-meeting preferences. The substantive content of that interview will be the principal substantive market-moving event of the substantive pre-meeting period.