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Oil prices fell today, Friday, with traders selling crude to take profits after a strong rise this week, thanks to growing confidence that the rapid spread of the “Omicron” mutant will not harm demand for fuel.

And US crude futures fell 0.1 percent, to $ 70.87 a barrel, by 01:50 GMT, after falling two percent in a volatile session the previous day.

Brent crude futures fell by four cents to $74.38 a barrel, after falling 1.9 percent on Thursday.

The two benchmark crudes, “Brent” and “West Texas Intermediate,” are heading for an increase of more than 6 percent this week, even with profit taking, in their first weekly increase in seven weeks.

Earlier in the week, the oil market regained about half of the losses incurred since the Omicron outbreak on November 25, 2021. But the sell-off came last night on the heels of credit rating agency Fitch downgrading two Chinese real estate developers, Evergrande and Caisa, saying they had defaulted on billions of dollars of overseas bonds.

This has fueled fears of a possible slowdown in China’s real estate sector as well as in the broader economy of the world’s largest oil importer.