Oil price: China's shrinking manufacturing activity affects the crude oil markets
Although the prices of crude oil slightly recovered from the steady downward trend, it is unlikely to reach the economically-crucial $100 a barrel anytime soon, even by the predictions of the fierce optimists - and chartists. The slight rise in price during the last few days, which is more of an anomaly than a spike based on hard facts, does not reflect the ground realities: it happened, for instance, when the US crude stocks showed a significant build; the manufacturing output in China, the world's second largest economy, continued to slide for four successive months; the price of LNG, liquified natural gas, has come down steeply despite the serious cold spells in the northern hemisphere; the global worry about a potential new Covid-19 variant is still looming large. As far as the world's second largest consumer of crude oil is concerned, the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China clearly shows that the PMI - Manufacturing Purchasing Managers&#
