Oil supply and demand balanced at the end of the year

In this unprecedented crisis, the oil market has sounded like a wake-up call, or a leading indicator as economists say. The price of a barrel began its historic fall on January 20, when demand for black gold from China, the first focus of the coronavirus epidemic, worried traders. Or a month before the equity markets suddenly collapse.

"I spoke of a black April for the oil industry," said Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Tuesday, presenting his latest monthly report on the oil market. April is this crazy month when a barrel of Texan crude, the WTI, the benchmark in the American market, plunged, for a few hours, into the unknown territory of negative prices. The overabundance of crude was so high in the United States that investors were willing to pay to get rid of pre-purchased cargoes, rather than paying even more to store them in increasingly scarce tanks. At

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