Oil producers face Omicron uncertainty, rebellious customers

One thing is for certain when officials from OPEC, Russia and other oil-producing countries meet by teleconference Thursday to decide how much oil to produce in January.

They will want to try to make sure that last Friday’s sudden, sharp collapse in oil prices — a drop of more than 10% within a few hours, set off by reports of a threatening new Covid-19 variant — does not become a rout.

“They will want to put some sort of floor under prices,” said Richard Bronze, head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a research firm.

But the producers group, known as OPEC Plus, also must worry about the implications of the announcement last week that the United States and several other nations,