Oil Rises to $43.68  Despite Concerns Over Rising COVID-19 Cases

Oil prices rose on Monday during the London trading session to $43.68 per barrel despite growing concerns over the rising number of new COVID-19 cases.

The Brent Crude oil, against which Nigerian crude oil is measured, rose as high as $43.68 per barrel before slightly pulling back to $43.24 per barrel as at 1:25 pm Nigerian time.

The US West Texas Intermediate crude oil remained largely unchanged as it traded at $40.64 per barrel on Monday. The same price range it traded last week.

Despite the rising number of COVID-19 new cases in the US and the rest of the world, Brent crude oil has been able to sustain the recent upsurge on the back of OPEC and allies 9.7 million per day production cut agreement and the reported improvement in compliance level.

However, experts have said if the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to increase that demand for the commodity will decline as people and businesses would be forced to shut down operations and stay at home.

“There will be some kind of decline in demand if cases were to increase as people will stay at home,” said Howie Lee, an economist at Singapore’s OCBC Bank. “The pace of U.S. demand recovery will not be as steep as expected.”

Analysts at ING bank said in a note that the report of the Energy Information Administration due later this week will highlight the impact of the new restriction due to the second wave of COVID-19 on gasoline demand.

“We will get a better idea of what impact tighter restrictions in several states have had on gasoline demand with the EIA (Energy Information Administration) report this week.”