The International Energy Forum (IEF) revealed on Monday that worldwide oil demand from transportation fuels had been 5.2 million barrels per day (mb/d) lower in March than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper, titled "Alternative Metrics for Real-Time Assessment of Energy Demand," collected data from the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI), Google's Community Mobility Tracker, and Oxford's COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to predict demand recovery following the pandemic's 25% decrease in oil consumption in April previous year.

"The resulting rebound has been somewhat impressive so far," said Joseph McMonigle, secretary-general of the IEF, during a webinar to report the results. According to the survey, gasoline and diesel demand bounced back to about 93 % of pre-COVID peaks in March, up from about 87 % in January of this year. The United States and India accounted for about one-third of this increase in capacity.

According to the survey, flexibility in many European countries is 20-40% lower than the January 2020 benchmark. The IEF study looked at Oxford's COVID-19 Government Response "Stringency" Tracker in China to evaluate rebound in the lack of mobility information.

This dropped below summer 2020 peaks in March 2021, indicating a significant increase in transportation demand after passenger numbers fell 45 % last year. According to the survey, the lion's share of the lost transportation fuel requirement is jet fuel, which is forecast to stay at 5.5-5.7 mb/d throughout the first half of this year, versus 7.9 mb/d in the year 2019.