LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) – Oil prices extended gains on Thursday as bullish forecasts of recovering demand, strong U.S. economic data and a weak dollar outweighed concerns about the impact of rising COVID-19 cases in Brazil, India and Japan. “The performance of the past few days demonstrates the unbroken faith of the market in healthy economic and demand recovery,” Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil associates said. OPEC+ expects global stocks to reach 2.95 billion barrels in July, taking them below the 2015-2019 average. “The outbreak in India is holding back oil’s rally,” Howie Lee, an economist at Singapore’s OCBC bank, said. Europe’s major energy companies profited from a rise in oil prices to report big increases in first-quarter earnings, putting the worst of a pandemic-linked slump in fuel demand behind them.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 29, 2021 13:52 UTC