Black gold maintained its strength at the opening of trading earlier in the week, supported by investor confidence that the Omicron variant will not have a major impact on global fuel demand.
In the Asian session, U.S. Brent and WTI crude futures rose 1%, trading higher at $ 76.10 a barrel and $ 72.65 a barrel, respectively.
Both benchmarks have posted gains of around 8% in the last week, their first weekly increase in seven weeks.
This also makes more than half of the oil market losses have recovered since the Omicron variant was identified at the end of last month.
South African scientists said on Friday that they saw no sign that the new variant would cause more severe disease.
Meanwhile, investors were also cautious following the US Department of Energy's statement that it would sell 18 million barrels of oil from its strategic petroleum reserves on Dec. 17 as part of the Biden administration's plan to try to cut petrol prices.
