but a substantial part of the oil price decline is expected to persist into the medium term. Futures markets imply an increase in Brent oil prices to some $75 a barrel in 2020, but recent experience—including the Brent price rally to about $65 a barrel in April—suggests there may be considerable volatility around this upward trend. The IMF uses futures contracts for its baseline assumptions for oil prices. There is no simple alternative to futures for price forecasting at this stage; institutions using models missed the large price drop as well. An alternative supply-demand model being developed by IMF staff also points to gradually higher oil prices over the longer term—needed to ensure sufficient investment in production capacity to meet growing demand—but there is a very wide range of uncertainty