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| US crude price turns negative AGAIN after briefly trading above zero | US crude price turns negative AGAIN after briefly trading above zero |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| The price for a barrel of US crude West Texas Intermediate (WTI) continued its downward spiral on Tuesday following Monday’s historic crash, which saw prices enter negative territory for the first time ever. | |
| WTI plummeted below zero again after popping up briefly to over $1 per barrel earlier on Tuesday. US crude is trying to recover from Monday’s shocking losses, when prices fell as low as -$37.63 per barrel. | |
| The US benchmark was trading at -$4.53 a barrel as of 7:40am GMT. | |
| “What the negative price means is that sellers of oil are actually willing to pay buyers to take delivery of their oil,” Peter C. Earle, research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, told RT. “Storage is virtually nonexistent, and both the United States and much of the world is now, possibly for the first time in history, oversupplied.”’ | |
| The unprecedented price collapse comes as the Covid-19 pandemic keeps people at home and destroys demand for transportation fuel, which has led to an overload at oil storage facilities. The main US storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma (the delivery point for US WTI contracts) is now expected to be full within a matter of weeks. | |
| According to analysts polled by Reuters, US crude inventories were expected to rise by about 16.1 million barrels in the week to April 17 after posting the biggest one-week build in history. | |
| Traders are preparing for Tuesday’s expiry of the contract for delivery in May. Contract expiry is traditionally associated with lower than usual trading and more extreme market moves. | |
| Global benchmark Brent also fell sharply, trading more than 10 percent lower at $22.95 per barrel. | |
| For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section |