The West Texas Intermediate for January delivery lost 61 cents to settle at 65.57 U.S. dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for January delivery decreased 36 cents to close at 68.87 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
"There appears to be panic concerning the possibility that the Omicron variant could have a similar impact on oil demand as the outbreak of the pandemic did," Carsten Fritsch, energy analyst at Commerzbank Research, said Wednesday in a note.
U.S. health authorities said Wednesday that the country's first confirmed case of the Omicron COVID-19 variant has been identified in the state of California.
Omicron has been detected in a growing number of countries and regions worldwide, prompting governments to tighten restrictions and impose new travel bans.
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