After a stormy trading session, the price of a barrel of oil for May delivery listed in the New York market fell below zero for the first time in history with the end of trading, which means that investors are willing to pay to get rid of crude.
As May contracts expire on Tuesday, dealers should find buyers as soon as possible.
But with storage facilities in the United States drastically full in recent weeks, dealers have been forced to pay people to find buyers, causing West Texas Intermediate crude price to reach under $ 37.63 a barrel at the end of trading.
This is the lowest level recorded by the American West West Texas Intermediate.
Brent crude futures fell 9.2 percent to $ 25.43 a barrel.
In addition, US oil futures turned to the nearest maturity during trading, today, Monday for the first time in history, with crude storage tanks full, which discourages buyers, while weak economic data from Germany and Japan cast doubt on the date of recovering fuel consumption.
With the actual depletion of oil demand, a global glut has emerged in the supply, while billions of people around the world still need their homes to slow the spread of the new Coronavirus.
Experts attributed the decline to the decline in demand for crude due to the spread of the Coronavirus, and the proximity of US oil depots to fullness.
The collapse in the oil market comes amid a state of economic stagnation due to the repercussions of the spread of the Corunavirus, and the measures taken to combat it.
The International Monetary Fund warns that getting the world’s economies into a downward spiral will be the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
For his part, US President Donald Trump announced Monday that the United States will take advantage of the historic collapse in crude prices to purchase 75 million barrels to fill the country’s strategic oil reserves.
“We are filling up our national oil reserves… as you know the strategic reserves,” Trump said during his daily press conference at the White House on developments in the Covid-19 epidemic.
We are looking to put up to 75 million barrels in the same reserves”.
Black gold prices collapsed on Monday, to the point that the price of some of the barrels of US crude fell to below zero, which means that traders pushed their pockets to get rid of this commodity.
