Oil price revisions started cautiously: some banks saw Brent crude averaging $65 a barrel this year, and others, of a bolder nature, predicted that the oil benchmark could climb to $65 a barrel. Just a couple of months ago, these forecasts sounded pretty optimistic for the environment, given the slow rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, the continuing excess supply of oil, and reports of coronavirus variants emerging in different parts of the world, threatening new infection waves. Now, banks and traders are talking about Brent at $100 a barrel. Of course, a big reason for this is the slump in U.S. oil production caused by the Texas Freeze earlier this month. It was even greater than the production decline prompted by the pandemic last year, and it will take a while to recover—if it ever does fully. Yet demand has also been recovering steadily in some key markets, most notably […]