Oil's Recovery from Coronavirus Could Take Decades, Not Years - Bloomberg

Oil's Recovery from Coronavirus Could Take Decades, Not Years - Bloomberg:

Who knows what the new normal for oil demand will be once Covid-19 is firmly in the rear view mirror? Not me, that's for sure. But it is likely to be lower than it was in 2019, and it could be that way for many years. That’s going to create overcapacity throughout the oil supply chain and weigh on prices.

While signs are emerging that we might have passed the worst of this historic oil demand rout, they’re very tentative. No one is predicting a swift recovery to where we were before the pandemic struck. Some, including Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s chief executive officer, Ben van Beurden, suggest that oil demand may never recover fully.

Citigroup analysts don’t see jet fuel consumption back at last year’s level until well into 2022, and they’re at the optimistic end of the spectrum. Boeing’s CEO suggests passenger traffic might not get back to 2019 levels for three years, and even when the flying public does return, airlines will use their newest and most efficient planes to carry them, as my colleagues Liam Denning and Brooke Sutherland note here.