By Ajit Singh
It should come to no shock in how high oil prices have gone this year, and just how important just one barrel of oil is to every industry. Initially, the COVID pandemic depressed energy prices in 2020 sending oil prices below zero before prices snapped back throughout 2020 and 2021 faster as supply did not keep up with demand. In October 2021 even when Omicron was thought to have a dampening effect, the demand for oil was already very high which started to cause a strain for consumers. The Biden administration in November released fifty million barrels of oil from the nation’s strategic reserves, but that did not make any meaningful impact. Moreover, the supply chain bottlenecks certainly did not help as oil is used in over six thousand products that are produced daily. Further, the Russia-Ukraine tensions caused the near time spike in oil reaching ~$130brl before retreating.
