The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has decided to stick to its plan to put more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day on the market, Reuters reports, citing a joint OPEC+ technical report.

It is known that the price of benchmark oil fell more than 10% in late last November to $72 a barrel when reports of the new variant appeared, but since then the commodity has recovered to nearly $80.

"The impact is expected to be mild and short-lived as the world is better prepared to manage covid-19 and its attendant challenges," reads an OPEC+ Joint Technical Committee document on the new variant, detected last year in South Africa.

It should be noted that gradually OPEC+ has been "undoing" the production cuts, of 10 million barrels per day (about 10% of world production), agreed in March 2020 to compensate for the sharp drop in demand due to the covid-19 pandemic.