Brent crude futures, which traded close to $83 per barrel earlier on Friday, had fully recovered from the end-of-November sell-off over initial omicron fears, with OPEC+ boosting oil output for a seventh consecutive month amid waning fears that the variant would trigger large-scale lockdowns. Although global mobility in the world’s biggest oil consumers fell sharply at the end of the year and first days of 2022, according to Google data, the slump reflected the seasonal holiday period slowdown. But mobility in the world’s third-biggest oil consumer remains above pre-COVID levels which it hit in mid-November, the Google data showed. The global economy returned to 2019 levels in the second quarter of 2021 and rebounded by 5.7 per cent over the year. But some market watchers were cautiously optimistic that demand would continue to recover strongly, potentially fueling higher prices if oil supplies were unable to keep up.

Source: Punch January 08, 2022 14:33 UTC