Record decline in global oil demand

From IEEFA:

Global oil consumption is in free-fall, heading for the biggest annual contraction in history, as more countries introduce unprecedented measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

Travel bans, work-from-home, canceled vacations and disrupted supply chains all mean reduced demand for fuel. As societies respond to the virus, oil demand — already hammered by China’s decision to shut down swathes of the economy — is falling further. Oil traders, executives, hedge fund managers and consultants are revising down their forecasts dramatically.

The growing fear among many traders is that oil demand, which averaged just over 100 million barrels a day in 2019, may contract by the most ever this year, easily outstripping the loss of almost 1 million barrels a day during the great recession in 2009 and even surpassing the 2.65 million barrels registered in 1980, when the world economy crashed after the second oil crisis.

“This global pandemic is something the world hasn’t witnessed since 1918,” said Pierre Andurand, who runs oil hedge fund Andurand Capital Management LLP. “I do not see how the demand drop wouldn’t be multiples of the drop witnessed during the global financial crisis.”

Goldman Sachs, which runs one of the largest commodity trading businesses on Wall Street, is now forecasting that oil demand will contract by more than 4 million barrels a day every month from February to April. Other investors see much larger demand drops in the short term.

Andurand estimates that demand could easily drop by 10 million barrels a day in this quarter and even beyond.
[Javier Blas, Grant Smith]