DENVER (Reuters) – Oil supply and demand, hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, will not come back into balance until the second half of 2021, WPX Energy WPX.N CEO Rick Muncrief forecast on Friday at a Federal Reserve Energy Conference.

Prices could see some uplift in the second half of the coming year as supply and demand balance, Muncrief added.

U.S. oil futures CLc1 were trading around $42.44 on Friday. They have languished around $40 a barrel for months, below the cost of production for some U.S. oil producers.