By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com – Crude prices rose Monday, extending last week’s rally in a final push for 2021 on bets over next year’s travel despite continued threats to oil consumption from Covid variants.

But thinner-than-usual trading volumes — due to large numbers of market participants being on holiday — meant that price action could remain volatile in the last four days of the year.

The moods can also be tempered by Covid headline spikes that occur occasionally. 

In Monday’s Asian trading hours, U.S. crude’s West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, benchmark was down 0.5%, reacting to the in the United States over Christmas holidays due to bad weather and new Covid infections via the Omicron variant.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated Monday that they were investigating Covid reports from board members.

“Lower travel equaling lower economic activity in the US equals lower WTI, the US oil benchmark,” observed Jeffrey Halley, Sydney-based analyst for online trading platform OANDA. 

“Momentum is muted though, and I doubt either story will have a lasting impact on oil prices,” Halley added. “The global recovery story for 2022 is still on track. So far, the biggest fallout seems to have been disruptions to goods and services caused by isolating workers (especially air travel). That is only likely to cause short-term nerves.” 

After hitting $72.58 as the session’s bottom, the price of a barrel at $75.70 was higher by $1.91 or 2.6% by 1:30 ET (18:30 GMT). Last week the U.S. crude index was up by 4%. WTI has seen a 56% increase in year-to-date.

The London-traded benchmark oil price was at $78.36 per barrel, up 2.57 percent or 3.4%. Brent rose by 4% over the week, and has risen 51% in one year.

Those with long crude bet on positive market intervention by OPEC+, the oil producers that was due to meet next week.

Despite a rise in Omicron case numbers, OPEC+ maintained its commitment to increase its output by 400,000 barrels daily starting January at its latest meeting.

Omicron, which was detected for the first time in November, now makes up nearly three quarters of all US coronavirus cases. In some regions like the Eastern Seaboard, it can even make up as much as 90%. According to Reuters, the average number of coronavirus-related cases in America has increased by 45% to 179,000 each day for the last week.

While research suggests that Omicron is less lethal than the original Covid-19 strain that broke out in March 2020 — as well as the Delta variant that became rampant earlier this year — few are taking chances once they or those they have been in touch with are infected.  

But many people are also defying calls for caution or taking calculated risks as vaccines and boosters against the virus remain readily available and new treatments — such as the world’s first COVID pill by Pfizer (NYSE:) — get approved by the day.