Oil demand set for first fall in a decade as virus takes toll: IEA - Reuters

Oil demand set for first fall in a decade as virus takes toll: IEA - Reuters:

Oil demand is set to fall this quarter for the first time since the financial crisis in 2009 due to the coronavirus outbreak in China, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.

“The consequences of Covid-19 for global oil demand will be significant,” the Paris-based IEA said in a monthly report, using the new scientific name for the virus.

Demand in the first quarter of 2020 is expected to fall by 435,000 barrels per day (bpd) compared with a year earlier, it said, noted it would be “the first quarterly decrease in more than a decade”.

“For 2020 as a whole, we have reduced our global growth forecast by 365,000 bpd to 825,000 bpd, the lowest since 2011,” the IEA said, adding that it assumed economic activity from the second quarter would return progressively to normal.