The oil industry has always been a boom-and-bust business, and 2020 will go down as the biggest bust in the industry's history thanks to the double whammy of the coronavirus pandemic and the spring price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The oil industry has drastically cut investment in exploration and drilling since 2015 in response to tightening capital markets and investor demands for higher returns. Exploration and production companies have seen a flood of investment in the past six weeks that has pushed up stock values by 50%. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects demand for oil to return to pre-pandemic levels of 100 million barrels a day within 12 to 18 months. That's roughly the amount of excess oil on the market now due to pandemic-related shutdowns.

Source: CNN December 21, 2020 13:07 UTC