Vaccine rollout, gradual revival pushed crude prices above $50 per barrel: Report

Mumbai, Jan 9 (IANS) The rollout of Covid-19 vaccines coupled with a gradual revival in demand has enabled crude oil prices to surge above $50 per barrel level in December 2020 for the first time in FY21, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said in a report.Besides, the report said the 1 million barrel per day (mb/d) production cut announced by Saudi Arabia against the combined 75,000b/d increase granted to Russia and Kazakhstan for February and March 2021 would support the prices in the coming months."Ind-Ra believes that any further increase in crude oil price remains susceptible to the successful rollout of a vaccine globally along with effective containment of virus mutations," it said.The agency also pointed out that domestic crude production fell 4.9 per cent year-on-year (yoy) in November."During the month, the production volumes of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, Oil India Limited and fields under production-sharing contracts decreased 1.5 per cent yoy, 6.5 per cent yoy and 12.6 per cent yoy, respectively."Domestic production remained stable month on month (mom) during the month. On a cumulative basis, a fall of 5.6 per cent yoy in domestic crude production was registered during April-November 2020," the report said.It further said that domestic consumption declined 3.5 per cent in a YoY basis to 17.8 mmt while the petroleum product output and exports declined 4.8 per cent to 21.4 mmt and 33.7 per cent to 4.1 mmt, respectively, in November 2020."On a cumulative basis, production, domestic consumption and exports declined 14.9 per cent yoy, 14.1 per cent yoy and 14.2 per cent yoy respectively, during April-November 2020," it said.In addition, it said that natural gas (NG) production fell 9.1 per cent YoY to 2,331 million metric standard cubic metre (mmscm) in November 2020.
--IANS rv/sn/arm