Oil Market Likely To Rebalance By 2022 After COVID-19 Shocks - Equatorial Guinea Minister

Oil Market Likely to Rebalance by 2022 After COVID-19 Shocks - Equatorial Guinea Minister

The oil market, which is suffering from a crisis sparked by falling demand and low prices in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, will not likely fully recover until 2022 despite the optimism of some players, Equatorial Guinea's minister of mines and hydrocarbons, Gabriel M. Obiang, told Sputnik

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd June, 2020) The oil market, which is suffering from a crisis sparked by falling demand and low prices in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, will not likely fully recover until 2022 despite the optimism of some players, Equatorial Guinea's minister of mines and hydrocarbons, Gabriel M. Obiang, told Sputnik.

"The second wave [of the pandemic] is usually more difficult and even more dangerous. So, the second wave, if you wanted to know, has to happen at the end of this year. For the market to be able to be rebalanced this summer it is going to be extremely difficult. I would say that whoever says that it's going to be soon is an extreme optimist. My view is that we're not talking about balance until 2022," Obiang said in an interview when asked if the market is going to rebalance by July.

However, the normalization of the energy market also depends on how one perceives a balance, the minister added. He noted that "one could say that we have enough, that we all can sell."

"But then other people consider that balancing is the prices that we used to have before the pandemic," he added.

In April, oil prices reached historic lows and turned negative at the exchange, as the energy demand had fallen significantly in light of the COVID-19 outbreak, lockdown measures and economic meltdown. However, there are already "signs" of a gradual stabilization of the oil market, International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol said on May 14.