US Crude Oil Collapses Below $0 For First Time In History
American crude faced wipeout on Monday as US traders confronted the reality of a world awash with oil and nowhere to put it.
West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, sank like a stone for most of the day, hitting, then crashing through, historic lows. From a start above $18, at one point it was trading at a symbolic 1 cent a barrel — effectively worthless.
When New York trading ended, WTI was in negative territory for the first time ever — minus $37.63 a barrel, as traders were forced to pay others to take it off their hands.
“The May crude oil contract is going out not with a whimper, but a primal scream,” said oil analyst Daniel Yergin of IHS Markit.
Demand for all energy products has been crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has lopped about 30 per cent off normal daily requirements. Last week’s historic deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia in the OPEC+ alliance removed less than 10 per cent from global supply.
Brent, the Middle East benchmark, also fell on worries about over-supply. However, the decline was less severe, mainly for technical and logistics reasons, and it traded about 7 per cent down at about $26 per barrel.
The collapse in the price of US oil comes after President Donald Trump helped broker the OPEC+ supply deal,which he said would save “hundreds of thousands of jobs” in the US oil industry.
Since then, the American shale industry’s rig count, the number of wells in operation, has declined sharply as producers either cut production or went out of business.
