Oil prices post biggest annual gain since 2016

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Both US WTI (West Texas Intermediate) and UK crude oil prices had wrapped up the year’s final trading session sharply lower as OPEC+ sources had unveiled that the 14-member organization of petroleum exporting countries would likely to vouch for an output hike as early as in February, nonetheless, both benchmarks had reported their steepest annual gains in more than half a decade followed by an Apollonian amelioration in global demand outlook despite a rapid upsurge in Omicron cases in most G20 economies.

In point of fact, both US WTI and US Crude Oil contracts gained over a whacking 50 per cent in 2021 after hitting a seven-year peak above $80 per barrel in October, as major oil producers’ intransigent move not to hike output despite Biden Administration alongside its Western allies’ repeated calls to raise production coupled with a global-scale economic recovery from a pandemic-induced fiscal slump, bode well for crude oil contracts’ prices.

Aside from that, encouraging development over Omicron variant, the most contagious pandemic variant so far, had helped boost up investors’ morale, while recent studies had unveiled that the variant would less likely to require hospitalization admission unless presence of underlying risk factors.

However, during early days of pandemic outbreak back in the 2020s, US crude prices fell below zero for first time ever in record, tumbling as much as to negative $37 per barrel. Meanwhile, addressing that the year had been an animated story of boosterism in global-scale recovery of petroleum products’ demand, a partner at Again Capital Management in New York, John Kilduff said, “The oil market continues to be highly reactive to developments on the pandemic front - we're not out of the woods yet, but we are close to pre-pandemic demand levels”.

Crude oil surges more than 50.0 per cent in 2021

Citing statistics, in the day’s commodity market wind-down, UK crude futures’ prices had wrapped up the day 2.2 per cent lower to $77.78 a barrel, while US WTI crude oil futures tumbled 2.31 per cent to $75.21 per barrel.

Over the year, Brent skyrocketed as much as 50.5 per cent, marking up its strongest annual gain since 2016, while US crude futures snowballed 55.5 per cent, the largest yearly gain since 2009.