Oil prices and demand may be up, but the industry has a host of issues to sort out in 2021 Judith Kohler DENVER -- Tighter spending and the focus on free cash flow that were prevalent in the oil and gas industry before the pandemic are expected to continue even as demand and prices start to rise, two analysts said. The COVID-19 outbreak, a glut of oil and a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia converged to sink prices in April 2020 into uncharted territory: sub-zero for the first time ever. But even before the pandemic, oil and gas companies were laboring under heavy debt loads and cutting back to meet investors' demands.