The price of crude oil has lost its upward momentum
on Tuesday, but still remains relatively high in light of growing demand for
the commodity.
On Monday, there was a substantial increase in the
price of natural gas, LNG, and in proportion, the price of crude oil went up
too. The price of LNG, however, fell on
Tuesday, putting a drag on surging crude oil prices.
Analysts are worried about the impact on the crude
oil demand in the US, the world’s largest consumer, due to the steep rise in
Covid-19 cases, as the optimism that stemmed from the relative success of the nationwide
vaccine campaign started to wane.
In this context, they are watching the latest data
on the US crude inventories, scheduled to be released by the API, American
Petroleum Institute, today.
Since November 2021, according to the data from the
API, the inventories have been falling, sometimes exceeding the weekly estimates
of the former.
If the trend is not broken, it is encouraging news for
both investors and traders; that means the impact on the demand of fuel has not
been subjected to the fear of spread of Omicron, the latest variant of the
Coronavirus.
In Asia, meanwhile, the demand for the commodity is
up as the economies are picking up, despite the lingering concern over the
spread of Omicron variant of the Coronavirus.
Both China and India are doing everything in their
power to keep the risk at bay without harming the respective economies.
In India, there was a rise in diesel consumption in
December: since more than 2/3 of consumed fossil fuel in the vast nation is
diesel, it is a clear indication that the economy is on track; in China,
meanwhile, the authorities are hopeful that the spread of Omicron will be
behind them in the coming weeks ahead, exactly it did during the spread of
other variants in the past.
Since fatalities are encouragingly low from the new
variant, the global community as a whole appears to be bracing itself for
living with Covid-19, while minimizing the tendency to go into lockdowns.
