This is in response to rising oil demand. It also ended a long-running standoff that had caused oil prices to soar to an almost three-year high.
By March, oil prices had recouped all pandemic losses and have risen roughly 20% since then.
September 1 will see OPEC meet again to review market conditions and determine if there should be production level adjustments for October.
Despite increased vaccine rollout and the ease of lockdowns, producers made sure to increase supply as excess inventories drove prices to the negative territory last spring. In March 2020, a massive price war broke out between the oil-producing nations of Russia and Saudi Arabia. This occurred just as travel demand started to decline during the coronavirus epidemic. The expensive and difficult to maintain storage tanks quickly became empty, and the price for one American oil futures contract fell below zero in April 2020. Despite OPEC and its partners agreeing to reduce production to stabilize prices during the turmoil, the International Energy Agency says that those inventories are still being worked on today.
