The tightness began in the Atlantic Basin and spread as Asian buyers were forced to look for cheaper cargoes elsewhere.
After the wildfire spread of Omicron in the fourth quarter, oil demand has not been badly hit in a surprise to refiners that had reduced purchases.
Violent protests in Kazakhstan at the start of the year prompted fears of a prolonged oil outage, which did not materialise, that would have compounded outages elsewhere such as in Libya, Canada and Ecuador.
At the same time, OPEC and its allies have stuck by their timeline to slowly increase output, despite repeated calls by the United States and elsewhere to go faster.