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US oil falls below $70 per barrel over Covid-19 variant

By William Hoffman

17:32, 26 November 2021

Oil and natural gas central processing platform
Oil prices fell on new Covid concerns – Photo: Shutterstock

Oil prices are falling Friday amid a broader market selloff on worries of the spread of a new Covid-19 variant emerging out of Africa.

West Texas intermediate fell some 12% on Friday shedding more than $10 off the price per barrel to lows not seen since early September. The US oil benchmark opened at $78.34 per barrel on Friday but quickly fell trading as low as $67.40 per barrel. Earlier this month the price was above $84 per barrel.

Likewise, the European oil benchmark Brent Crude fell by 11% to $73 per barrel down from $81.65 at the open. At that price, Brent Crude is back to its mid-September levels and even below some of the peaks it reached during the summer.

Coronavirus concerns rise

The move lower is in response to a new Covid-19 variant scientifically known as B.1.1.529 that emerged out of South Africa and Botswana.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average moved nearly 1,000 points lower on the news while US Treasuries rallied in a flight to safety.

Silver

24.14 Price
-1.600% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0205%
Short position overnight fee 0.0123%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.020

Oil - Brent

77.68 Price
-0.550% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0148%
Short position overnight fee -0.0071%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.032

Gold

2,018.43 Price
-0.540% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0200%
Short position overnight fee 0.0118%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.50

Natural Gas

2.72 Price
+1.300% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee 0.0524%
Short position overnight fee -0.0743%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.0050

Little is known about the virus to date, but Maria Van Kerkhove, infectious disease epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, said the variant is highly mutated, which can have an impact on how the virus behaves.

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Oil reserves

Earlier this week US president Joe Biden announced plans to release millions of additional barrels of oil from reserves in coordination with China, India, South Korea, Japan and Britain.

The US is releasing around 32 million barrels of the 70–80 million barrels expected to be released from the coordinating countries. The release of reserves comes after the countries failed to pressure OPEC to increase production to meet the growing supply.

However, analysts at Goldman Sachs said the reserve release fell short of market expectations of 100 million barrels. The extra supply is only expected to lower prices by around $2 per barrel significantly less than the $8 per barrel sell-off since late October, the analysts said in a report titled "A Drop in the Ocean.”

Read more: Oil prices rise despite release of reserves: Here’s why

Markets in this article

Oil - Brent
Brent Oil
77.681 USD
-0.43 -0.550%
Oil - Crude
Crude Oil
72.950 USD
-0.405 -0.550%

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The difference between trading assets and CFDs
The main difference between CFD trading and trading assets, such as commodities and stocks, is that you don’t own the underlying asset when you trade on a CFD.
You can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss if it moves against you. However, with traditional trading you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the individual shares or the commodities for money, and you own this until you sell it again.
CFDs are leveraged products, which means that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of the CFD trade in order to open a position. But with traditional trading, you buy the assets for the full amount. In the UK, there is no stamp duty on CFD trading, but there is when you buy stocks, for example.
CFDs attract overnight costs to hold the trades (unless you use 1-1 leverage), which makes them more suited to short-term trading opportunities. Stocks and commodities are more normally bought and held for longer. You might also pay a broker commission or fees when buying and selling assets direct and you’d need somewhere to store them safely.
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