Oil slumps as vaccine doubts increase

Gulf Today Report

Oil prices fell on Friday as the US observes thanksgiving and markets having doubts about vaccine.

Brent crude was down by 10 cents at $47.70 by 06:02 GMT, having fallen 1.7% overnight. West Texas Intermediate was down by 86 cents, or 1.9%, at $44.85.

US crude prices did not settle on Thursday due to the holiday. 

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 Earlier in the week, AstraZeneca announced its COVID-19 vaccine is 70% effective and could amount to 90%. That has helped both benchmarks to jump about 6% this week.

Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA said: "with much of oil's rally in November built on expectation, sentiment and speculative fast money, some sort of correction was long overdue."

OPEC+ are likely to stall January’s scheduled increase in oil output.