Oil prices near $80 a barrel ahead of OPEC+ meeting
Oil prices posted the first gain in 2022, edging towards $80 a barrel ahead of the meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+.
Brent crude futures, global oil benchmark, gained 1.15% to $78.93 a barrel by 9.51 GMT+1 on Monday, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures increased 1.04% to 76.25 a barrel.
OPEC+ will meet on Tuesday to review their plans to increase crude oil output by 400,000 barrels per day.
Abhishek Chauhan, head of commodities at Swastika Investmart Limited, told Reuters that “tightened supplies from Libya ahead of OPEC+ meeting kept the market sentiments positive”.
A Reuters poll showed on Friday “that oil analysts have lowered their price forecasts for 2022 as the Omicron coronavirus variant poses headwinds to recovering fuel demand and risks a supply glut as producers pump more oil.”
In 2021, oil prices climbed to a three-year high, at over $80 a barrel.
On December 20, oil prices had dipped to $70 amid rising cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant in Europe and the United States.
According to Reuters, economists and analysts had projected that Brent crude would average $73.57 a barrel in 2022, about 2% lower than the $75.33 consensus in November.
In Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari had signed the 2022 budget into law with an average of $60 per barrel for the oil price.
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