[hajile]

The shutdown hit oil production quite a bit. Recovery and startup lag by months.

All the Democrat candidates put themselves forward as anti-oil. If you thought Trump would lose, it would be smart to buy oil and then hold for a while.

When Biden won, the speculation took off. Signals matter.

Biden signaled that everyone must move away from gas-driven vehicles. He banned a pipeline (getting sued by Canada over that one). He banned as much fracking as he could. Even worse, he defied congress and the law by allowing the Russians to build their pipeline which will pipe money straight into Putin's pocket

The result of these changes (and others) was a lot of people shutting down oil production. Others speculated even more that the pipeline and fracking decrease would mean less supply, so they bought up the oil while the prices were still down.

With OPEC refusing to up production, there's even less reason for the speculators to sell. Biden released part of the strategic reserve, but it amounted to less than two days supply of oil for the country and nobody who knew anything about the oil market cared very much.