Oil’s collapse is deepening.
Just a day after U.S. crude futures for May delivery plunged below zero for the first time ever, June futures plummeted 43% to close below $12 a barrel in New York. A massive supply glut brought on by the pandemic and a worldwide shortage of storage space have touched off relentless rout that has shifted the entire forward curve for oil.
The meltdown spreading across global oil markets has already wiped out tens of thousands of jobs and frozen billions of dollars in capital spending. Its deflationary effect threatens to further cripple economies around the world already reeling from coronavirus-fueled lockdowns. Storage tanks, pipelines and tankers have become overwhelmed by a vast oversupply brought on by an unprecedented plunge in global fuel demand.
Oil is a “dangerous market to trade in right now,” said Pierre Andurand, founder of Andurand Capital Management LLP, in a Bloomberg TV interview. The market needs oil production to fall immediately for prices to recover, he said.
The price crash spilled into the ETF market, with the biggest crude-tracking fund, the United States Oil Fund LP, moving some of its WTI contracts into later months, according to a regulatory filing. The spread between June and July U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rallied more than $1 a barrel on the move.
Oil ministers from the OPEC+ coalition held an unscheduled conference call on Tuesday to discuss the collapse without settling on new policy measures. The Texas Railroad Commission, meanwhile, opted to put off a decision on whether to impose oil-production quotas.
In London, the immediate contract for Brent crude was at the biggest discount to the following month in data since 2008. U.S. marker WTI’s June contract was halted three times early in New York to manage the volatility.
“If you start to look at the actual supply-demand situation for oil, it’s not so obvious that by the time those contracts expire, the storage situation around Cushing will be very different than what it is in May,” said Martijn Rats, Global Oil Strategist at Morgan Stanley, in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “The prices of these futures will need to connect to the physical reality, and they are likely to crack lower.”
WTI for June dropped 43% to $11.57 a barrel in New York. The thinly traded May contract closed at $10.01 a barrel. Brent crude futures for June slumped 24% to close at $19.33 a barrel.
The collapse is reverberating across the oil industry, with prices trading below zero across America on Monday. WTI Midland in Texas -- a flagship marker for the U.S. shale industry -- was at -$13.13 a barrel, while crude in Alaska was at -$46.63.