Today, oil prices extended gains on expectations that central banks will provide financial stimulus to offset the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

Brent crude LCOc1 rose 79 cents per barrel, or 1.5%, to $52.69 per barrel by 13:05 GMT.

On the other side, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) CLc1 was up 85 cents, or 1.8%, at $47.60 a barrel.

It should be pointed out that brent and WTI have rebounded somewhat over the past two days after sliding more than 20% from their January peak on signs the spread of the coronavirus had dented fuel demand.

With lingering worries over oil demand amid the virus outbreak, several key members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are mulling a bigger oil output cut of possibly 1 million barrels per day (bpd). The previous proposal was for an additional reduction of 600,000 bpd.

OPEC and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, are expected to announce deeper output cuts at their meeting on March 5-6 in Vienna. The group had agreed to cut output by 1.7 million bpd in a deal that runs to the end of March.