Oil falls, but holds near recent highs on China demand recovery hopes

• Financial

On Monday, both US WTI (West Texas Intermediate) and UK crude oil futures’ prices tumbled over 1.0 per cent, but held close to a nearly one-month peak reached last week, as an ease in Pandemic-led restrictions in Beijing had stoked optimisms of a sharp recovery in oil demands.

China is the world’s largest oil importer. In the matter of the fact, in the day’s downfall in crude oil futures’ prices was almost entirely galvanized by a sell-off frenzy following more than an 8.0 per cent uptick in both benchmarks last week.

On top of that, in the day’s tottering in crude oil contracts’ prices was largely buffered by a Government data that unravelled China’s crude oil imports had spurred up as much as 4 per cent in December compared to the same time a year earlier.

On top of that, further increase in China’s crude oil import is expected this month, as fuel demands in transportation sector would highly likely to take a giant leapfrog due to a resurgence in travelling for Lunar New Year holiday in China.

Crude oil falls, but holds close to a nearly one-month peak

Citing statistics, in the day’s commodity market wind-down, UK crude curbed 1.3 per cent to $84.20 a barrel, while US WTI crude oil futures’ prices pummelled 1.3 per cent to $78.85 per barrel.

Meanwhile, addressing to China’s growing oil demand, a head of commodity market strategy at TD Securities, Bark Melek said in the day’s commodity market wind-down, “The narrative that Chinese growth is going to add to demand is playing a very large part here. There could be as much as a million barrels per day of demand returning”.