decline in global oil prices. Later on the same day, oil prices had decreased by 30%, representing the largest one-time drop since the 1991 Gulf War. Oil traded at about $30 a barrel. Very few energy companies can produce oil when the price of oil is this low. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq had the lowest production costs in 2016, while the United Kingdom, Brazil, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Canada had the highest. On 9 April, Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to oil production cuts. By April 2020 the price of WTI dropped by 80%, down to a low of about $5. As the demand for fuel decreased globally with pandemic-related lockdowns preventing travel, and due to excessive demand for storage of the large surplus in production, the price for future delivery of US crude in May became negative on 20 April 2020, the first time to happen since the New York Mercantile Exchange began trading in 1983.In April, as the demand decreased, concerns about inadequate storage capacity resulted in oil firms "renting tankers to store the surplus supply". An October Bloomberg report on slumping oil prices—citing the EIA among others—said that, with the increasing number of virus cases, the demand for gasoline—particularly in the United States—was "particularly worrisome", while global inventories remained "quite high". With the price of WTI at a record low, and 2019 Chinese 5% import tariff on U.S. oil lifted by China in May 2020, China began to import large quantities of US crude oil, reaching a record high of 867,000 bpd in July. According to a January 2020 EIA report, the average price of Brent crude oil in 2019 was $64 per barrel compared to $71 per barrel in 2018. The average price of WTI crude oil was $57 per barrel in 2019 compared to $64 in 2018. On 20 April 2020, WTI Crude futures contracts dropped below $0 for the first time in history, and the following day Brent Crude fell below $20 per barrel. The substantial decrease in the price of oil was caused by two main factors: the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war and the COVID-19 pandemic, which lowered demand for oil because of lockdowns around the world. In the fall of 2020, against the backdrop of the resurgent pandemic, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that global oil inventories remained "quite high" while demand for gasoline—particularly in the United States—was