NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices rose 3% on Tuesday, rebounding from recent losses on signs of rising fuel demand in the United States despite a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Brent crude rose $1.59, or 2.3%, to settle at $70.63 a barrel and U.S. oil climbed $1.81, or 2.7%, to end the session at $68.29 a barrel.
Both contracts dropped around 2.5% on Monday, and last week notched their biggest losses in months as infections surged in major global oil consumers.
“Predicting short-term price swings has become extremely difficult given the arduous process of predicting the impact of the Delta variant on forward global oil demand, particularly in countries such as China where data is much less transparent than that of the U.S.,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates LLC in Galena, Illinois.
