Topic: The drying oil (Read 899 times)

the price of crude oil on the world market is based on supply and demand, because the corona outbreak stops most economic activity and citizens' activities, oil demand drops dramatically and thus the price on the stock market. Companies prefer to order less fuel, airlines stop fuel purchases because their planes don't fly, public fuel consumption is also small because many people stay at home and don't use their vehicles

The pandemic situation has affected everything, everything is on pause ( not those who needs to move essentially) including the usage of oil that's why we have seen a massive drop in oil prices because there is low consumption of it, what we have now in our country is stocked oil that's why we aren't getting any price hike. The aftermath of the pandemic might affect the oil industry but I don't see it very severe on the oil industry, I worry more on the stock market.

    The pandemic situation has also aggravated the oil industry. Also, oil consumption is much lower than before the pandemic because people keep their cars in the garage. However, the oil industry will suffer a lot after COVID-19, as well as other industries.

It can actually. Solar power got a lot of potential however there are hindrances for us to widely use it all over the world. From issues about the climate up to business companies wanting this into halt . These video might lead you to many realizations. Please watch:

https://youtu.be/CS3bBO05fpU
https://youtu.be/Uw_bweN_90E

You are not glad that there's a mass price rollback? Why seems you want oil prices to recover? Hmm, I think it is better to remain this way especially that we face financial crisis. Such decline on the price of this commodity absolutely lessens our burden .  

The only oil price that has dropped was the American oil company and I think the reason for the negative prices is the fact that they are still producing oil and amping up the price resulting in a high supply but with the pandemic spreading the demand was so low that they can't recover the expenses for the oil production, one thing to note about is the fact that the negative price of oil does not mean that they are going to pay you for getting a barrel, they are paying for the storage. These sudden dump of oil price is expected because there is a pandemic which obviously will put some businesses and industry on halt, it was unfortunate that the oil industry is affected too.

Scientist are trying hard for alternative energy sources and solar energy might be the alternative everyone will be using because it is environment friendly without any pollution, yet we are not in a situation to say that fossil fuel will not be used in the next decade. The reason crude oil prices are in the headline is because many countries are selling oil and the production keeps on increasing while the demand is not proportional nor space to store the product. If the countries competing get together and cut the production then the price will recover.

The fact is that in the market the demand for oil has begun to decline significantly with a drop in the pace of economic development worldwide.  Moreover, this trend began to intensify even with the emergence of problems due to the coronavirus pandemic, when the need for oil as a source of fuel decreased even more.  but since market prices always fluctuate depending on supply and demand, the oil supply on the market has increased many times.  new players appeared on the oil market with serious volumes of their goods, such as China, Kazakhstan and Angola, and despite the tense situation in Brazil and the almost martial state of Iraq and Libya, these countries did not reduce oil production.  In addition, the United States and Canada show significant growth in oil production.  It seems to me that it is very difficult to predict further developments in the oil market, but if the oil supply exceeds consumer demand, the oil price will no longer rise to last year's prices.

you're not getting what I am pointing out here, that's why I posted it on economics section for the purpose not to talk about other necessities that people need right now.

What I mean by this is that, there are still machines that needs tan oil to operate in fact we still have a lot of cars in the road travelling right now, government vehicles used to transport frontliners. That's why I'm asking why the price of the oil plummeted at that point and hit below the ground.

Indeed.
LOL. I said it sarcastically and you don't get it. Go get some.

i'm sure this pandemic take a part for the oil price, as what u said , the demand about oil become low because most of ppl save their own assets to survive at this pandemic

there are things that more people need too on this kind of situation not just oil  .


you mean price drop sharply ? you said less vehicles traveling now so that could be the main reason  . aside from cars , all i can think of that uses it is generators and nothing else but generators are rarely being used too


dont know what you mean but i only know is that covid affects everything .


crypto is really volatile , who said not ?

There are chances that after pandemic is over oil will break the ceiling and will come back as trading leader.
I hope it will not happen and we'll slowly forget what oil is and will be all about renewable energy sources, but its hardly believable

The prices will probably not rebound that well at all, not just any time soon but never. We are at the break of a new dawn where oil is not needed as much as it used to, there are still ways that oil could be used but that is getting smaller and smaller, one day we will no longer need it at all. That is why I could understand why the price may never rebound. Definitely with the inflation and all when a gum is worth over a dollar, the price of oil will be where it was one day, maybe in a decade maybe longer but at the same time we are talking about other stuff taking its place.

I feel like maybe the oil price could be 20 bucks at max because at this point that is what it deserves, even if the lockdown is lifted there won't be all that much purchase for a long time.

Still but not all, there are some countries couldn't do what the other companies did, due to thus pandemic issues for they are focused on using their funds to people's need. That simply goes to companies that is within the boundaries of that specific country.

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And yeah, you got a point. Buying is surely an easy thing but where to store those things, is a different matter.

The point is they already did so a few weeks ago, but the price went further down.
And today all the deposits are full, and nobody know where to store this oil.
This sent the price negative. Everyone is fully stocked.

This is where solar electric and renewable energy sources really have their time to shine.

Kick oil and other fossil fuel sources while they're down, and maybe they can get a better foothold on the industry.

Oil and fossil fuel emissions are one of the worst things for our planet (along with deforestation). It's about time the oil industry took a god damned beating.

Indeed, but what about the companies, they should have used this opportunity to stack up some oil for their own and for later use. Although the shipment is one thing to be considered due to some places that had been locked down. Still I think reservations are quite good and making a payment via bank transfer.

If I were one of the biggest companies who used to buy oils then I could use this one time opportunity. And have them owe me for the oil's price is surely at negative but still I got to avail them...

In a situation like this it’s going to be difficult for stocks like oil to move forward, no one is buying them. The report is that the sellers are even begging to sell their oil. How can oil be growing when it’s the sellers begging to sell their oil? Covid-19 has changed everything, and it didn’t just affect oil, other stocks were affected as well.

Oil is not a thing right now, as energy is slowly taking over. There are now lots of electric cars that don’t need any oil to power them. As time goes on, the automobile industry might start releasing more cars that are electric cars and less of cars that makes use of oil.

If you guys are regular consumer of oil might as well you buy as much as you can these days with price not having a roll back or an increase, just buy at the last price of oil from your market it is still unaffected.
Don't you worry about the weather, if it is too hot, from tropical country like Philippines it never reaches above 60 degrees too far from the smoking point of an oil which is relatively from 300 degrees celsius to 500 degree celsius.

Even the oil price in our province is low. Since we have tricycle and it uses oil and fuel (which also has a low price), I advised my mother to buy extra but not too many because it is still dangerous. Fuel can cause fire plus the weather in Philippines in this month is so hot. So those extra are just in case of emergency plus save money due to low price.

Could we maybe see an increase in oil usage in the future because of this? I have never considered it but I was always saying maybe this is because people are moving towards renewable energy all the time and there are improvements on the structure of solar panels which makes it a lot cheaper and allows people to have good looking roof and also never pay for electricity again etc etc.

However we are not really thinking it through, I didn't at least. With oil becoming so cheap, when you are offering people what they want to use for energy, if they have the choice they could basically make a change on their production and move to oil instead of renewable energy because it is quite cheap, that really change changes things. If that is true we are in for a bigger trouble.

for sure. the USA is the biggest oil producer in the world, and they also have some of the most expensive per barrel costs---and prices are now back to 1990s levels.


there is increasing talk about a cold war with china: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/coronavirus-pandemic-us-china-new-cold-war

i'm not reading too much into it yet.

Believe me the US are not happy with all this stockpile, and for sure not about the price being so low.
And a war against who exactly? not THEY are the big boys in the oil industry.

Is the United States readying themselves for war while it's cheap? I believe after the times the U.S. stockpiled Crude Oil, a big war broke out.

Many are late in understanding this phenomenon. When some people explain the geoeconomic approach with their muscle knowledge it is always considered to be only a conspiracy theory. America began to withdraw its troops at several points in the Middle East to be a sign that oil is no longer something that is important to the superpower countries in the world. Especially after the United States became the king of oil with his shale oil.

In addition to realizing that oil will dry up, China's energy dependency will cause havoc. China is a country that has a state platform toward energy self-sufficiency. As we know today that China has a dependency on energy imports. Therefore China has programs that support the platform such as the global electric car market mastery program in 2035 (automotive industry road map). The monopoly and dominance of the battery industry is not only for cars but also for houses, buildings, and drones. Then the construction of smelter infrastructure in many countries for the monopoly of raw material batteries such as Ni and Li.

Most of the governments were already stocked the crude oil needed for the next three months so I doubt that anyone will buy now the even US tried to store the produced oil in the containerships still the expenses are getting out of hand than the actual price that is the reason why the price of oil went down so when the condition back into normal we will see spike in the oil prices.

IF you have stock, you are actually going to be paid to stock the fuel!

anyway. USO is still on play today.

USO Oil Fund Crashes Again as Crude Prices Tumble



It's like an enormous, dramatic circular reference.

This situation with the current low price, is going to cause a long term economic problem in the fuel market.
Many people now are buying petrol in order to get advantage of the low price and have stock for the winter. This means that winter sales ar going to be lower than expected.

with the current condition, new, cheaper fuel will certainly be sought after if the oil has gone up again,
and in 2030 it is likely that many non-oil-powered cars must also have a lot like electric power or the sun and maybe there are more

Electric cars were already on the road by the year 2030 it is rare to find a car powered by fuel but now we relied on oils so the price will hit up when the lockdown back into normal.Countries who adopt to solar and other renewable energies sooner will get more advantage of making the expenses more cheaper and can provide the source to their people more cheaper as well.

I honestly hope this could lead countries to use more of renewable energy instead if such unreliable resource like oil.
In couple decades when oil will be gone - those countries who were smart enough will have enough energy (like Australia for instance)

Interesting piece from the FT:

Oil world zeroes in on Cushing, Oklahoma




So don't expect prices to rebound too soon.

Happy, BUT nowhere to go, because of COVID-19 pandemic. Haha.


I've been riding my bicycle more too. I love it, more exercise for me. Plus, doing it only during a pandemic? Ironic.

Oil price is in shambol right now and this is due to the effect of covid19, why so because the demand for oil consumption has dropped greatly so with this we can say oil is also as volatile as cryptocurrency. Am happy this is happening so the world can know the true nature of cypto.

Honestly it doesn't matter what the reason behind it is, but maybe this period where we are all at home could help out the renewable energy which is literally the biggest enemy of the oil so far in the world. As long as we have sun and we have wind which we can't have zero amount, we will continue to survive with that.

Oil is not something you can find everywhere, eventually it dries up and there is no more to take out, sure we find more and more of it every day but that doesn't change the fact that it is a limited amount, whereas sun is rampant and everywhere, sun is lighting on the world every single minute, if it is not to you right now that means it is to somewhere else around the world but it is always hitting the world just right and that means renewable energy could be endless source of energy for us and which is where the smart money is going, that is why oil is getting hurt more and more each time, eventually we will not use it at all.

Oil price hit down due to the extended lockdown, we still don't know when the pandemic will be resolved so countries are hesitating to stock the crude oil because more longer they store then the more expensive they will face and also some countries are in need of funds for a medical emergency which left the oil untouched so prices went down too much.

For each type of security, there are risks. oil has never had to be negative because the warehouses are full and owners are wrong when they continue their strong production strategy. This is a problem of supply and demand, which is very normal. As for the crypto market, many people still say this is a scam market and I agree with them. when billions of dollars are traded each day with no conditions to guarantee the risk to investors, that's a very bad thing.

You have the answer already in your comment. The pandemic lockdown has restricted movement and there is less cars on the road. Cars use oil. This is what has affected the oil price, and not the pandemic itself. If there is free movement even with the pandemic, the demand for oil will increase and price will rise up again.

Like other commodities, the price of crude oil in the world market is based on supply and demand. The pandemic halted most economic activity and citizens' activities, the demand for oil dropped dramatically, and thus the price on the stock market. Oil purchase contracts in the world market are various. Some transactions are carried out for the future, called futures, or futures. This is a type of contract that allows the buyer and seller to set a specific date in the future when the oil purchased must be sent by the seller to the buyer, at a price determined at the time the transaction was made. The holder of this transaction letter can also trade these contracts on the stock market.

Futures on the crude oil market for May are due on April 21, which means, after that date these transactions cannot be traded anymore. This also means the seller must send oil to the buyer. The problem is that oil storage areas are now full because oil demand is very minimal. The less available storage space, the more expensive the storage costs, this is what makes many futures owners who try to sell the contract in the last days before maturity, because they want to get out of the contract and prevent the shipment of oil physically. That's what happened with this type of WTI crude oil earlier this week. The stock market is flooded with futures offers for May because they will soon be due. As a result, oil prices continue to plummet and enter the minus territory. The sellers scramble to offer incentives to those who want to buy the contract.

meh, my car just sits in the driveway. do you have any idea how many trips to the grocery store i can make with one tank of gas? it's in the 100s.


it hasn't even gone into effect yet, and won't for another week. SBA bailout loans are also breathing life into USA drillers, so next month's contract could see some craziness too, given the existing glut of stored oil. i wonder what's gonna happen.

I am pretty much sure you are aware of the Russia and Saudi Arabia oil war that has been going on for long, which ultimately ended up causing both of them to pump up significantly more oil than usual which caused a rise to global oil supply. This event was the main cause for the drop of the price of oil to less than $30 per barrel. A deal was later made between OPEC and other oil producing countries that to cut down of production causing the supply to reduce, but wasn't enough. Other countries started to take advantage of it, stored much of the oil, but then came the recent pandemic which caused the use of oil to drop thus causing increase of supply once again and the oils that were stored was not being used at all. This in turn caused prices to drop more. Now the oil war isn't something new, this kind of event has been taking place for a long time which ends up with a deal being made. Then another problem rises and so on causing the price to jump up and down.

Can't really help it. The majority of us won't even leave our houses after all since checkpoints are all over the place and you wouldn't even be able to pass by them without a valid reason. Not to mention the fact that most usages of the car right now are used by the government to transport food and supplies, and they only number to a few hundred in each place. If you were to compare that to how the oil usage is normally in a regular day, you'd probably see that right now, less than 1% of the original amount are being used. There's also the idea of planes not being used and they also number quite a lot, so you had to have seen this kind of thing already when various major countries started implementing lockdowns.

Car owners are really happy now filling a full tank.  

My neighbor told me how cheap it is now and he spends just a little money to fill his tank in full.
Yeah, there is a connection with Covid19.
Less vehicles are now being used outside because of the quarantine which means less demand.
Yeah, I'd rather ride my bicycle if I want to buy food at the store.

Anything can fall with just one bad news , with oil I am not very sure but I think it's the virus considering that the number of people using their cars have been lessen and the demand for the oil has been drop cause majority of countries that is affected by COVID are on lockdown right now. The other thing is the oil market has trigger a "short squeeze" so number of investor starts pulling out their money and they all started to short the oil. Anything can happen on the market, it just really takes a one bad news or someone big time messing up their money.

If you don't want to be involved with oil drying with covid-19, it doesn't matter, many other things can cause the price of oil to plummet and dry up.

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If you know that, last week, US crude oil inventories fell very quickly from the estimated only 2 million barrels, the opposite was 11.1 million barrels.
Which is estimated to dry out only 2 million barrels, but the opposite is happening.

If you see and triggered from other things such as crude oil prices rose US $ 0.81 you can say this is more than 1.4 percent if you see per barrel can penetrate US $ 59.51, this is very big influence on the drying and sluggish oilthe world today.

Well, this is going to make a lot of people understand that cryptocurrency is not the only asset or stock that can crash.Every market in the world, none is above falling, especially at a time like this. When this Coronavirus outbreak started a lot of assets and stocks started falling, and the good thing is that Bitcoin was able to recover after the slight fall, unlike so many others that found it difficult to recover. The cryptocurrency market has been recovering as of recent. Altcoins like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, ChainLink and a lot of them are doing just fine. I don’t see any other investment that is better than investing in cryptocurrency right now, just a few out there can compete.

There are companies who uses oil to produce stuff as well, you think the only machine that oil works is cars? There are tons of manufacturing factories that uses oil to power up their machines as well which all are closed down right now and not requiring any oil.

Also, just cars is one thing but we are talking about ships and cargo and planes and so forth, basically many thinks that require oil is all closed down right now, so it is not just your car, we are talking about ALL cars and all trucks and all planes and all ships as well, put the machines on top of that and you have yourself less than 10% of what we were using, which of course means if there is less need for oil, the price of it will go down as well since people who get the oil out can't sell it to people they usually sold to.

The drop of demand due to halt of transportation, rises uncertainty to investors and to avoid contract which lead to panic selling because no one has the capacity to store oil that comes with Oil futures contract causing a big dump recently causing Oil to breach negative territory and this may result of an domino effect which could for other Economic Institution to collapse.

Previously, world crude oil prices dropped dramatically in the midst of the Covid-19 virus pandemic. The decline in prices occurred due to market concerns over the decline in oil demand due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic...
  there are positive things in addition, the decline in oil prices can help the economy of the community in the midst of this co-19 pandemic, although activities have not returned to normal

It's actually a very long story. Although, the demand shock started it, it really was starting with a mis-timed price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, when Russia walked out of an agreement to cut production.

That is not the main reason. to me, it's due to a shortage of oil storage. During the 3-month isolation period due to the epidemic, it seemed that all the oil depots were full and could no longer contain them. then they decide to sell to those who need to use it at extremely low prices and even give money to the buyer when buying their oil. This is unprecedented and this is an event that will be recorded in human economic history. and if in the next 2 months the price of oil is still below $ 25 / barrel then surely there will be more than a thousand businesses going bankrupt!

What is really happening in the price of crude oil??? There are a lot of things here in our world that is utilized by using oil, but somehow there are technologies that are powered by solar rays. Innovation is really helping people overcome non-renewable source related problem. I don't think that the virus really contributed to this downward movement in oil's price into zero. I believe that there are still people or industries that uses oil in their activities or work to make their products and supplies. This lockdown really make people having no work e household still uses oil just to cook food but people have no money to spend because of the quarantine. Economy have no thing to do but to deal with these changes in price.

Hmm, I can say YES for that. I mean that seems true simply because numbers don't lie. Don't worry, the oil price rollback you are witnessing is not unusual. We also experience here in our country . And this happened due to the low demand of people.

So if you have a car, better to get a full tank now before the low price lasts. That's the best move you can do right now. Though it will be useless because you can't totally use it right now due to wide lockdown, but at least you now have a plenty supply when the price go back to normal. The few bucks you save from it is not bad in all fairness.

Well, sad to say for oil companies but I guess their Black Gold weakens at this moment . 

Well I think Covid 19 has some impacts on companies who uses oil in their machines. Some companies stopped their production that's why oil have this all time low price. This virus has gone wild and affect many industries.

This is really shit by many governments as many are not going to give any incentive to common peoples same happening in our country they are still selling on very high price and taking very good profit which is not good in this lock down electercity price also very high as they are not adjusting fuel cost as its happening in world.

oil demand = 50% road transportation sector, 11% aviation and shipping. so the bulk of demand is being hit quite hard by the economic halt.

petrochemicals (including plastic feedstocks) = 14%, not nothing, but i assume that plunging general consumer demand and industrial shutdowns should cause a major decline in manufacturer demand for petrochemicals too.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/307194/top-oil-consuming-sectors-worldwide/


i'm happy to see gas prices down 25-30% but frankly i have nowhere to drive anymore and haven't filled my tank in weeks.

if im not mistake

this price is from WTI futures

most countries buy oil from Brent

There are a lot of things that depend on the oil industry, not just oil for cars and other machines.  Oil refineries are responsible for other kinds of hydrocarbons which are used in lot of other industries if I'm not mistaken. 

I haven't really been keeping abreast of the news lately, and I'm not sure why oil prices have gotten hammered in the past month or so, but it fills my heart with glee that oil is in fact getting slaughtered in the market.  I'm happy that people only have to pay $1.57/gallon of gas near where I live.  That entire sector has been corrupt for decades, and more than a century actually.  But nor do I know how the viral outbreak is playing a part in all this.  I'm kind of thinking that those two things are related, but I'm not sure exactly how.

The demand for oil isn't exactly zero, but there might have been a significant drop in it since the coronavirus outbreak.  All around the world, people have been shut up in their homes and probably haven't been doing as much traveling in their cars as they usually do.  If that's one of the contributing factors, I'd expect oil prices to rebound once life starts to get back to normal (whenever that is).  Might not be a bad time to buy some oil stocks, because they're probably good bargains right about now.

Well it is very obvious, from all of the markets falling now the only thing that caused it is the virus, almost everything that is happening now is actually because of the covid-19.

There is only significant in the oil price, not in the demand therefore it has nothing to do with the oil price at all. So what if the price hits the ground? If no one will buy it or sell it right now it should be fine. And some of you guys might wonder why is the current price of oil or gas right now have not change yet, simply because it was not from the price were they bought it, in short they were stock.

Its simple, there is no demand for oil across the world, we can say that only cars are not running but we need fuels for other machines but every government keep the required fuels in the stocks so they will use that oil for now and production companies are even willing to give it for free no government is ready to take it because almost every country filled their stock level when it hits $30 range but now it keep falling.

We know that most countries affected by the pandemic implement social restrictions and lockouts that result in reduced oil consumption in all countries, while oil-producing countries must continue to produce so that the contract price of oil in April reaches minus this is the worst event of all time.

Well, it was coming just around the corner...
People don't need to use that much oil today (Electric transport, alternative energy).
I just counted for myself, and it appears it's cheaper to get a solar electrostation rather than paying electricity bill 3 - 4 years

It's a mixture of the two.

Russia and Saudia Arabia are currently in the midst of a oil price war at the moment. What this has lead to is the two countries continuing to pump out as much oil as possible to stick it to the other. Typically, in a time like this OPEC and other large drillers of oil would have limited the supply of oil to help themselves out to stabilize the price.

The Coronavirus situation isn't helping as some of the biggest users of oil -- Cruises, Airline Companies, etc -- are not using as much oil as usual as a large amount of flights are cancelled due to lack of demand and cruise have been stopped for awhile in the US as well (pretty sure the government is making them stop for like 120 days or so?)

People also don't really understand how the oil futures contracts work as well: I'll try to explain it as best as possible. The futures contracts that went negative (down to -38 per barrel at a point) if held to expiry would force you to have to purchase 1000 barrels of oil at $-37 a barrel. While that sounds perfect, the problem is that no one wants that oil and there's no cheap way to store crude oil. There's a major glut in the market, and you'd kinda just be sitting on product that you'd have to pay to go pickup.

1000 barrels of oil is 42,000 gallons of oil. You'd need like two extra long tractor trailers to go hold that product and then you'd have to store it and find someone to sell it to later. Contracts expired yesterday, April 21st. Which is why people were playing hot potato with it.

In my country we didn't realize a huge drop in the oil price.
There is a small decrease of about 0.20 cents but this is not totally the change that we expected.
The price stays high due to the high taxation that is imposed from the government.

Indeed oil price has taken a deep drive and reached to the lowest level in last 22 years. However, majority of the countries have not seen a single penny less. The reason is simple - government taxes! It's an opportunity to the government to increase the tax on the oil price to fill their own coffers. I can give you a simple example of India. The news is a month old but it would give you a clear understanding on the tax bifurcation on oil.

https://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=detail&n_id=417&Itemid=10

Hope this helps!

Yes and No.
Yes there are many other factor to include in computation when assessing impact on petrol station prices. Mainly taxes. Where I live those are more than 50% of the final price, hence the "industrial price of gasoline" has little effect on the final prices, as you said there are many more margins, costs, taxes and excises to be added. As @figmentofmyass mentioned in his post, most taxes are actually excises, so a fixed amount per liter, and their toll on final prices has grown dramatically lately.
Of course in many other world region the FX aspect of a devaluing currency can play a major role in that dynamic also, I have no direct experience of that being in the EUR area, but of course it is true for many regions.


The No part is regarding the industrial price itself. This is determined by some kind of "spot" (meaning "real time") price indicators. So the price at which the products are sold is always tied somehow to the current price of oil. There are many agencies to provide such indicators, one of the prominent being Platts. The point is: what is real time? In the past two days the first WTI future was NOT included in this definition of price. So the fall in that particular instrument had NO IMPACT in the industrial price. This is something I already pointed out here, a few post above in this very threrad.


Of course June expiry is going down the same path now, as the disruption continues.
As I said the world had never been so full of OIL lately. US  has begun to literally crack Oil our of rocks, russians are desperate to sustain them self, on top of that OPEC is falling apart.
This is a secular trend.
On this secular trend added the Coronavirus.
Major oil consumers are lagging (transportation for obvious reasons are a missing buyers here- air lines in particular, but also industrial users or land transportation).
Many oil producers simply cannot turn the well out, as the costs will be massive, so they keep pumping oil and filling every hole on Earth. Deposits at Cushing, OK (delivery point of US WTI)  are nearly full capacity, OIL tankers are full just anchoring idle outside ports everywhere.
So, this is the temporary trend.

On topo of those trends there was the last technical trend, the less relevant, but the most dramatic relating the May US WTI future Expiry.

Summing up in just two lines: everyone saw low petrol prices, so a lt of investors put money in OIL ETF's. Those ETF saw massive capital inflows in the last weeks. This caused some "smart" ETF manager to hedge themselves not only with JUNE, JUL and AUG contracts, but also with MAY Contracts, that were trading at huge discount (why pay more for the same product?).
Nearing future expiry they HAD to roll the expiry (they are banks after all, they cannot take the physical delivery), so they had to SELL the MAY expiry to buy the JUN expiry (or JULY, or AUG), whatever the price.
THIS sent the price negative to -40 USD.

The most reasonable reason why the price of fuel oil in various countries has not decreased even though the price of world crude oil dropped. There are several factors that determine the selling price of BBM as a basis for calculation. The main components of this calculation are the price of crude oil and the dollar exchange rate. While the other components are distribution costs, storage costs, margins, and others. One thing that should not be ignored is the period of importing crude oil for raw materials for producing BBM.

The average crude oil currently produced to be sorted into fuel is the crude oil that was imported 2 months ago when the price of crude oil was still high. So, of course, the calculation of fuel prices still refers to the price of oil in February instead of using the current price. Current prices are only used for the calculation of fuel prices over the next 2 months. That is the reason why fuel prices have not yet come down. Plus the current high dollar exchange rate makes price reductions even harder to realize. Then it is predicted that a new decline around May and June can be adjusted prices.

I think that falling oil prices have the following reasons. First, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, many countries restrict people from leaving their homes. Therefore, the world demand for gasoline dropped sharply. Second, the oil producing countries cannot close their oil production companies because the cost to close the companies and open the companiest after the epidemic is over is huge. So they chose the solution that produces oil as always. Therefore, the amount of oil in the storage is very large. So I think these are the main reasons for the significant drop in oil prices.

Just this moment where oil become nothing without have value because many bigger countries keep to product of oil around the world, but I am still confused with my country why price keep the same and not down, how ever oil world price going down but my government not give access to make oil keep going down.

gas prices have been steadily dropping over the past few weeks. it doesn't happen all at once since gas stations price it based on their actual costs, not the price of futures contracts.

fuel taxes (at least in the USA) are also priced in cents per gallon, not %, so taxes become disproportionately large as prices drop. take california for example: state/federal excise taxes add ~66 cents per gallon, plus local taxes where applicable, no matter what the base price is.

Somebody help me understand. So Oil prices took a deep dive to the lowest price in 20 years. But in most countries, the price of gasoline in most countries hasn't even dropped. Why is this so?

+1. this is one reason why the oil market will continue being really wonky into next month. shutting down a well is super expensive and doing so can apparently do permanent damage to the oil field too.

that creates big incentives for producers to keep pumping full steam ahead---which also means more dumping of oil futures to hedge against production, even below $0. this is obviously unsustainable for long periods of time. something has gotta give.

No, the pandemic is not the main reason. The main reason the disagreement between OPEC and non-OPEC countries. 

The demand was really going down a bit and OPEC countries wanted to decrease production so that the prices wouldn't go down drastically.

I read that some countries don't know what to do with oil surplus so they're loading every single container they have and keep trains fully loaded ready for export. I believe the prices will go down even more.

This can be a good policy or way to make oil price increase again because in economics, scarcity brings increase in demand which will make price to rise as few people have the product to sell and they can create their own bid price. However now that the economy itself is sick with covid-19, the demand may not rise because people are observing indoors and no movement

Yeah, and then don't open the market for oil obviously so what we are going to do is to wait for the market to open and invest as much as we can because if the pandemic crisis ends there would be a skyrocket demand for the oil making the price up again and will turn the 21 year low to another ATH. Cryptocurrency market on the other is looking great so far I do trading and impressively making good returns of investment. I'd be thinking if the pandemic crisis will take long, are we going to have a good market like this? I don't wish it to happen tho.

Obviously one of the most reasons is about this pandemic has a huge role for the changes in the price of oil. During this global crisis where a limited number of transportations are allowed to be operational as well as production and other business are a force to shutdown temporarily then the demand on oil has been reduced. In order for oil companies to sell, they will do it at a lower price to encourage everyone to purchase their oil.

For now, let us enjoy the low price because after this pandemic the price might become back to the normal price. Good benefits to the consumers but it is really sad to the investors and businessmen that probably they will experience as of now a huge loss.

Demand reduced drastically short term. Shale oil producers cant just simply pause their production. If they pause it costs to start again are enormous.  Classical oil pumps can be turned on and off easily and they do it.

They produced to much oil and now, there’s no big demand on that but we all know that Oil is still important and when the things get to normal, oil will become more expensive as the economy is trying to survive. It hit the price below ZERO but we also know that it bounce back again, we don’t know what’s happening but the market is still on a good position, either an opportunity or a dead end to some people.

At present, the problem is caused by the virus crisis Since everyone is sitting in the lockdown both production and investment are declining so oil production is declining. If this continues the world will be worse off We need oil in our daily life not just in cars This is why oil companies will not be taken into account if the oil companies take any action.

For now I think there's no effect for switching on renewable energy since actually electric cars globally spread since most of the car guys are still using a oil operated cars and the major cause that contributes for the current price dried up of the oil are the current lock downs happening on the world since if there are no demand coming starting from big factories to the lowest sector who use it well provably we can see more of this things coming.

And for continuously extending up the lock downs of countries affected for sure we can see more price decreased and this could hurt the oil industry badly.

Because cars are the biggest consumers oil and i know you know that. So lockdowns across the Globe means less demand. On top of all the crisis Russia and Saudi Arabia did something unusual after their stupid disagreements and decided to flood the market with excess oil.

You are also forgetting that more and more people are switching to Greener and renewable alternatives of Energy like Electric cars. Look at the trend of the graph, the price of oil may never achieve a new all-time high again

Unfortunately, the bad situation of the world markets is reflected in oil prices today. In the evening, I do not remember exactly how many years later this happened, but oil prices have declined very badly, and prices of oil futures have reached negative levels. Unfortunately, I think it is a nightmare night for the oil investor or oil company investor nowadays. I think it is important to remember that this crisis has also been likely to infect the stock markets or cryptocurrency markets.

Right, this is the only reason I think of, factories are closed because of the lock-down so definitely no one is needing oil as this point. That's why the price suddenly plunges not just into zero but in the negative zone. Meaning the market is really flooded with oil but there are no takers, not demand. Oi Refineries are not willing to gamble, air travel are banned across the globe, and even individuals are not using their cars anymore, obviously because of the lock down. So the pandemic has a indirect negative effect to the oil industry.

The possibility of this pandemic factor is because mass production in the industry has stalled due to the long-lasting lockdown in some areas, of course this will be of little demand because according to people now rarely go out to drive cars so that the supply of oil is large and uncontrolled due to demand according to covid-19.

I do not think whether this is another factor that is clearly linked to the pandemic so that the crisis is continuing and who knows when it will be finished, but I heard the news that in the east by selling oil cheaply because of continued turbulent economic inflation.

Well, the good thing about this whole thing is that the earth will rest a bit from the ruthless activities of mankind on her.
We should be moving to the good/safe sustainable alternatives for our own good and the good of earth.
Before you invent something, consider the disadvantage... Its good should far outweigh the bad or there should not be bad at all.
There should be serious consequences for people who are aware of the implications of these technologies/industries but insist on creating them, and eventually destroying the environment.

I sometimes feel very guilty knowing that i in some ways, depend on this things that are  slowly destroy our world. This is one of the reasons I am moving to a clean, good, safe, sustainable living.


Hopefully it doesn't become business as usual for this kind of industry.

No one is expecting for this to happen, but it is really true that this event is the first time where crude oil experiences crash in price that reaches 0. It is not only the household who uses oil, there are factories that needs oil just to operate and produce more products that we are needed during this quarantine. Food manufacturers and etc., are using oil so that their machines will work and the production of their products or items is continuously operating. Not all businesses are closed because of the quarantine, their are incorporation that utilizes oil so that they can grant our necessities to produce their product. Transportation is still active in using oil but this quarantine makes it minimal compared to the normal days where virus is not yet existing.

The way to stop this price drop is to decrease the production.
OPEC usually does that and the price is going up again. I wonder why they still haven't taken such measures. In the end they are going to suffer from a huge inflation.

The pandemic might have a big impact on it, with people staying at home, factories and productions are temporarily closed down, imports and exports restricted in other countries there might have been a lot of supplies of oil than the demand for it. This pandemic really had affected almost all the sectors of the economy. I think this will only be temporary, and once sone companies and  lockdown had been lifted everything will recover slowly.

There is simply  too much OIL.
And too many non-OPEC producers (USA and Russia) are flooding the market with OIL.
OPEC is non anymore the powerhouse it used to be.
And also it's market share is a fraction of what it used to be years ago. Now the USA alone have a production roughly at 50% of OPEC volumes.

A few production cuts will be enacted from May 1st. Let's see how it plans out.

Regarding the negative prices the explanation is quite simple. And very much of a short term reasons.


OF course COVID-19 can be a perfect explanation for the "2020 leg" of the long trend graph you posted above.

While the above factors you highlighted are the cause of the decline in oil price. The household is now the only consumer of the oil. This is very minute in the demand for the global oil. Obviously, the demand for oil is lower than the supply of oil.

But, will the price increase as OPEC has reduced the oil production volume?

in an indirect way, they are. the economy in high consumption nations is experiencing deflation---no one is spending money. that means demand for import goods is plunging. the pandemic therefore has world trade screeching to a halt. so is air travel, which is down between 90-100% amidst all the travel restrictions.

with consumers refusing to spend, and scant world trade and air travel, who wants to pay to store tankers full of oil? nobody needs it anymore.

negative prices on may delivery means contract holders are being paid handsomely just to take delivery on oil. that's how bad things have gotten. this has never happened before.

The price of oil barrel is determined according to many factors, not only by ask and demand like other marchandises. It has been always that volatile because of it's unstable condition, like bitcoin price.
Let me tell you that there is still asks to buy oil from classic providers, even there is no cars and no vhecules, but as you said, other industries and machines use it. Even the price crashed, some countries are actually living in an oil crisis. The shippement of oil becomes the most difficult part in the oil marketplace.

Okay we get it, less cars, less vehicles traveling so the oil is not that what we really need right now

But, why is the price be looking like this? It is not only the cars that uses oil, we also have a lot of machines that isn't running without the oil

Don't tell me the covid-19 global pandemic cases is inversely proportional with the oil price lol



as of now XRP is worth more than a barrel of oil. Smack it to the face of those people who's shouting that cryptocurrency is soooo VOLATILE