Markets

Even though most petroleum futures prices pulled back on Thursday and Friday, the gains that had been made on previous days were enough to result in week-on-week rises.

Market chatter throughout the week seemed firmly focused on tightening fundamentals.

Reduced crude output from Libya and Kazakhstan as well as persistently low production from several OPEC members—combined with more projections that the Omicron variant will have a limited and short-term impact on demand—helped push futures prices for crudes and refined products to highs not seen in over a month.

After 2020's price rout, 2021 was a year of recovery. From the end of 2020 to the end of 2021, ICE Brent futures prices gained 50.2%, DME Oman crude was up by 51.0% and NYMEX WTI soared by ..

After concerns over the Omicron variant lessened somewhat in the previous week, worries about the effectiveness of existing vaccines darkened sentiment over the week ending Dec. 17.

Even though the new COVID-19 variant has been found to be more highly infectious than previous strains, it has, so far, resulted in fewer hospitalizations than had been feared, so the demand impact is now expected to be less than initial projections indicated.

As more cases of the new COVID-19 variant appeared in various countries around the world and in states all across the US, futures prices for NYMEX WTI and RBOB, ICE Brent and gasoil, and DME Oman crude fell over the week ending Dec. 3, though the declines were much less severe than they had been in the previous week.

Earlier in the week ending Nov. 26, the market fluctuated between the moderately bearish news of US President Joe Biden having convinced the leaders of other consuming nations to release crude from their strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs) and the bullish news that OPEC+ was considering slowing its production increases in response.

Throughout most of the week ending Nov. 19, market chatter focused on a shift from concerns about tight supplies to worries that a surplus will soon begin building.

Prices for front-month NYMEX WTI and ICE Brent futures slipped for a third week in a row as of Nov. 12 while NYMEX RBOB and ULSD decreased for a fourth consecutive week.