Oil drops on India’s COVID-19 crisis, pipeline resumption
Oil prices fell more than 2% on Thursday as India’s coronavirus crisis deepened and a key U.S. pipeline resumed operations, halting a rally that had lifted crude to an eight-week high after the IEA and OPEC forecast a rebound in global demand later in the year.
Brent crude was 3.36%, or $2.33, at $66.99 per barrel, after rising 1% on Wednesday.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) slid $2.32, or 3.5%, to $63.74 a barrel, having risen 1.2% in the previous session.
If those losses are sustained, both contracts would mark their biggest daily drops in percentage terms since early April.
In a bearish signal for oil demand, a variant of the coronavirus has swept through the countryside in India, the world’s third-biggest importer of crude.
Medical professionals have not been able to say when new infections will plateau and other countries are alarmed over the transmissibility of the variant that is now spreading worldwide.
Reference: CNBC
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