Oil Continues Rollercoaster Ride As OPEC Considers Omicron Impact On Fuel Demand

Oil Continues Rollercoaster Ride As OPEC Considers Omicron Impact On Fuel Demand

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud, Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia arrives for an OPEC meeting ... [+] in 2020. Recall that on Friday oil fell more than 10%, and is down 20% since peaking at $85 in late October — now technically in a bear market. Expect gasoline prices to soon follow suit, thus giving President Biden reason to credit his decision last week to release 50 million barrels from the strategic petroleum reserve. Of course correlation is not causation. As we wrote last Friday, Biden's move was too small to really do anything to oil markets other than reconfirm to American frackers that the White House is not their friend. Neither is OPEC particularly impressed, with oil ministers reportedly dismissing the impact of the move as "muted" given that governments will end up purchasing more oil next year to replace about 70 million barrels sold into the market. Worldwide demand is roughly 95 million bpd. The big question the OPEC+Russia ministers will address on Thursday is whether to continue its normalization strategy of adding back each month a cumulative 400, 000 barrels per day of the more than 5 million bpd they chopped from supplies as Covid hit