Owing to the global lockdowns that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel demand plummeted and the price of oil futures went negative in April 2020. Robust fuel demand projections are crucial to economic and energy planning and policy discussions. Here we incorporate pandemic projections and people’s resulting travel and trip activities and fuel usage in a machine-learning-based model to project the US medium-term gasoline demand and study the impact of government intervention. We found that under the reference infection scenario, the US gasoline demand grows slowly after a quick rebound in May, and is unlikely to fully recover prior to October 2020. Under the reference and pessimistic scenario, continual lockdown (no reopening) could worsen the motor gasoline demand temporarily, but it helps the demand recover to a normal level quicker. Under the optimistic infection scenario, gasoline demand will recover close to the non-pandemic level by October 2020.

由于COVID-19大流行导致的全球封锁，燃料需求暴跌，石油期货价格在2020年4月变为负数。稳健的燃料需求预测对经济和能源规划以及政策讨论至关重要。在这里，我们在基于机器学习的模型中结合了大流行预测以及人们由此产生的旅行和出行活动以及燃料使用情况，以预测美国的中期汽油需求并研究政府干预的影响。我们发现，在参考感染的情况下，美国汽油需求在5月份快速反弹之后缓慢增长，并且不太可能在2020年10月之前完全恢复。在参考和悲观的情况下，持续的锁定（不重新开放）可能会使发动机恶化汽油需求暂时下降，但这有助于需求更快地恢复到正常水平。