Oil bounces back slightly after falling into bear market

Crude oil is up slightly after falling into a bear market this week. Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre has the details.

Video transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. I want to start by highlighting the fact that we are seeing this rebound lose a little bit of steam, as the Dow is up just 300 points right now after yesterday's big sell-off. And Jared, you and I were both talking about oil as one thing to watch here, as we're not only talking about maybe an overreaction to the omicron variant, but also what OPEC Plus plans to do in the wake of all those variant questions, too.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, I think that's going to be very instructive, what OPEC Plus decides to do, because they have been on this glide path of increasing production by 400,000 barrels per month. That is set to happen at least throughout April of next year. That's an agreement they came to months ago. That has been in place. They haven't changed it. But of course, we know the dynamics are quite different. Now there was speculation not too long ago-- by the way, you're looking at WTI crude futures for today. But I want to dial this back a couple of months. This is a two-month chart. I'm going to put some candlesticks on here. And you can see the big drop.

Now, when we were closer to these highs, that was when all the hullabaloo-- I think I got that right-- was being made by Biden and world leaders about the price of oil. And then they released Strategic Petroleum Reserve not only in the US, but across the world. That was about 50 million barrels that's being done over the course of about, I believe, six to eight weeks. We saw that contribute to the price decline. Then we got the new variant. That really led to that steep sell-off that we saw before.

So, all in all, crude oil has been very volatile. Now, with these lower prices, OPEC Plus, when they meet tomorrow, I believe it is, probably not going to be as pressured to change their strategy, but we've seen these meetings before that were thought to be in the bag when they just kind of changed direction suddenly. There can be a lot of volatility around these meetings. And so that's what we're going to be here for tomorrow. I will be bringing that to you, I'm sure, in the 11:00 to 1:00 myself, Zack.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, the tit for tat there around what the Biden administration has been trying to do with allies around their strategic oil reserve moves, and now OPEC Plus, the ball in their court here, as they kind of try and address--