Petrol price could dip below €2 per liter as oil prices fall to pre-war levels

Oil prices fell further on Monday morning and are now nearly back to the pre-Russian invasion of Ukraine levels. This is mainly because coronavirus infections are on the rise in China. The country is the largest importer of oil in the world. The falling oil prices mean there is a possibility that the price for a liter of petrol could dip below 2 euros.

The largest source of infection is the metropolis of Shanghai. Over 26,000 new coronavirus infections were reported there on Sunday, despite strict lockdown measures. The lockdown has already caused disruptions to the city's port.

Oil prices have risen sharply since the war in Ukraine, fueling inflation. This undermines the purchasing power of households and damages the economy. Fuel prices have also skyrocketed along with the oil price, which is why the Netherlands and others temporarily lowered the excise duty on petrol and diesel.

At the end of last week, the member states of the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that they would bring a record number of barrels from their strategic oil reserves to the market in the coming months - 240 million barrels in total. The United States and other member states like Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands, want to reduce oil prices in this way.

The price of a barrel of American oil fell by 2.4 percent at around 7:30 a.m. on Monday to $95.94. On February 23, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, the American oil price peaked at $93.90. Brent oil, the benchmark for oil from the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, dropped 2.3 percent to $100.46 a barrel.