TOKYO, May 13 (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Thursday,
pulling back from an eight-week high as concerns about the
coronavirus crisis in India, the world's third-biggest importer
of crude, tempered a rally driven by IEA and OPEC predictions
that demand is coming back strong.
Brent crude LCOc1 was down 32 cents, or 0.5%, at $69.00 a
barrel by 0145 GMT, after gaining more than 1% on Wednesday.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was down 31 cents, or 0.5%, to
$65.77 a barrel, having risen 1.2% in the previous session.
"The path for crude prices appears to be higher but until
the situation improves in India, WTI will probably struggle to
break above the early March high," Edward Moya, senior market
analyst at OANDA, said in a note.
Oil demand is already outstripping supply and the shortfall
is expected to grow further even if Iran boosts exports, the
International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its monthly report on
Wednesday. A day earlier, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) stuck to its forecast for a strong return of
world oil demand in 2021, with growth in China and the United
States cancelling out the impact of the coronavirus crisis in
India.
But global concern is rising over the situation in India,
the world's second-most populous country, where a variant of the
coronavirus is rampaging through the countryside in the
deadliest 24 hours since the pandemic began. Medical professional are still unable to say for sure when
new infections will hit a plateau and other countries are
alarmed over the transmissibility of the variant that is now
spreading worldwide.
Fuel shortages are getting worse in the southeastern United
States six days since the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, the
largest fuel pipeline network in the world's biggest consumer of
oil. Colonial, which pipes more than 2.5 million barrels per day,
said it is hoping to get a large portion of the network
operating by the end of the week.