Energy traders bailed out of the expiring May U.S. oil futures contract in a frenzy on Monday, sending the contract to a record of almost $1 a barrel, as few buyers are willing to take delivery of actual physical barrels of oil because there is no place to put the crude. May U.S. crude futures hit a low of $1.02 and were lately down $16.47 to $1.80 a barrel, a 90% drop. With demand down 30% worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the main U.S. storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma [Read more]

U.S. crude storage facilities are filling rapidly, albeit from a low starting level, and tank space will become a problem if the global oil market remains heavily oversupplied in June and beyond. With global lockdowns already sharply reducing demand for oil, a lack of storage would weigh further on already depressed prices, leaving producers with few financial or physical alternatives but to turn off the taps. The system still has the capacity to continue absorbing crude at the current [Read more]

Oil rigs in the United States saw their steepest cuts since February 2015 as crude prices more than halved since the start of the year despite fresh global efforts by producers to cut output to counter a glut triggered by demand destruction from the coronavirus pandemic. Drillers cut 66 oil rigs in the week to April 17, bringing the total count down to 438, the lowest since October 2016, energy services firm Baker Hughes Co said in its closely followed report on Friday. The oil rig count, an [Read more]

Marathon Petroleum Corp will idle its 166,000 barrel-per-day (bpd)refinery in Martinez, California beginning April 27 in response to the coronavirus pandemic's hit to demand for refined products, according to a company official. The company did not provide further comment on the likely duration of the idle, but said it intends to return the plant to normal operations once demand levels support doing so. The Martinez plant is the second in the United States and third in North America to [Read more]

What happens next in the oil market depends on how quickly and completely the global economy emerges from lockdown, and whether the recessionary hit lingers through the rest of this year and into 2021. The OPEC+ deal, finalised on Sunday, envisages production cuts of 9.7 million bpd in May and June, with the cuts tapering through the rest of 2020, 2021 and the first quarter of 2022. It assumes further reductions will come about as a result of price-driven cuts to the output of the United [Read more]

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, held a phone talk on Thursday and said in a joint statement they were ready to take measures with other OPEC+ members on the oil market if necessary. They also said both Russia and Saudi Arabia were committed to the global oil cuts deal. OPEC and other large oil producers led by Russia, a group widely know as OPEC+, have agreed to reduce their combined oil production by 9.7 million [Read more]