Oil Closing the Year with 20% Losses

Oil prices are declining on Thursday, the last session of 2020, a year in which crude futures lost more than 20% of their trading value.

The Coronavirus pandemic has severely impacted the global oil industry, with crude prices hitting lows not seen in years amid a decline in demand for energy in 2020.

After starting the year with oil prices at $70 per barrel, supported by the recovery that was helped by the OPEC+ alliance production cuts, crude prices reached $20 a barrel in April.

However, oil is closing the nearly double its price levels in April.

As it stands, Brent crude futures are set to end the year with losses of about 22.5%, while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures are down by about 21.4%, according to Reuters.

A recent report by the Financial Times expects a recovery in the demand for oil in early 2021, based on recent projections by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Demand is expected to increase by 6 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2021, reaching 96.9 million b/d in the next year.

This compares to a record level of demand at 100 million b/d that was seen in 2019.

It was originally expected that the demand for crude oil will increase by one million barrels a day in 2020 and 2021, but this has changed due to the COVID-19 crisis.