Oil futures open lower in electronic trading, extend losses from last week; traders expect demand to fall for months

New York: US oil futures dipped in electronic trading Sunday evening, extending losses from last week that marked the eighth week of losses out of the last nine. Trading was extremely volatile last week, in an extension of the selling that has dominated trading since early March as demand collapsed 30 percent due to the pandemic. Global production cuts have not kept pace with the collapse in demand. US West Texas Intermediate CLc1 futures were down 32 cents to $16.62 a barrel as of 6:15 PM ET (2215 GMT), while Brent futures LCOc1 rose 12 cents, or 0.6 percent, to settle at $21.56 a barrel. [caption id=“attachment_3478307” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Oil futures marked their third straight week of losses last week, with Brent ending down 24 percent and WTI off around 7 percent. Traders expect demand to fall short of supply for months due to the economic disruption caused by the pandemic. Investors will be watching this week for results from oil majors including Exxon Mobil, BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell. Producers may not be slashing output quickly or deeply enough to buoy prices, especially when global economic output is expected to contract by 2 percent this year, worse than the financial crisis. Storage is quickly filling worldwide, which could necessitate more production cuts, even after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia agreed this month to cut output by 9.7 million barrels per day.