In early December, the price of a barrel of Brent returned to its “pre-lockdown” level. It crossed upwards the 50 dollars, which we had not seen since March 2020. This rebound ends, in the last straight line, a completely unprecedented year for black gold: in April, crude oil prices American oil collapsed temporarily into negative territory (down to -37 dollars per barrel of WTI), during the expiry of futures contracts on the Nymex market. The containment had just caused global oil consumption to plummet by 28% in a few days. A practically unmanageable fall in the real world: we no longer knew where to store the barrels of which the buyers of futures contracts did not want to take delivery. This is the technical explanation for these negative prices.

More revealing of the general state of the world, the CRB raw materials index also suffered an unprecedented bout of weakness in the spring. It fell to less than 107 points on April 21, unheard of since 1993. The CRB traces the evolution of the prices of 19 products listed on the futures markets, including agrifood. Which makes it a good barometer of the economic pandemic.

Abyss. Admittedly, fossil fuels still represent 39% of the total. But if the health crisis has pushed the index into the abyss, it is because other components have also suffered greatly from the forced shutdown of global activity. This is the case for basic industrial materials in particular, present at 13%. China's economic rebound, which seems to have overcome the pandemic at the end of the year, logically allowed the CRB to rise above 164 points in December.

We are still far from the levels of 250 points and more that characterized a good part of the 2000s. “recalls Benjamin Louvet, raw materials manager at Ofi AM. “This whole decade has been marked by the rise of China in the consumption of base metals. Its share has jumped from 10% to 40-50% of world consumption in ten years, continues the expert. Copper embodies the accelerated industrialization of the country. It reached a peak of more than 10,000 dollars per tonne in 2011.” At the same time, the barrel of crude began to suffer structurally from the emergence of shale oil, the wells of which have multiplied in the United States.

Will we ever see the CRB again above 300, or even 400 points, as in 2008? “We can absolutely witness a new outbreak of this index, believes Benjamin Louvet. The world will wake up after the pandemic with a delay in investments in the exploration-production of essential raw materials. This is the case of oil, which has already suffered for several years from a glaring lack of spending. We will realize this when economic growth returns. »