It’s Monday, April 27.Ĭliff, tell me about this moment when oil prices collapse. Reporter Cliff Krauss on the energy crisis that nobody saw coming. Because of the pandemic, it now has far too much of it. Today: For decades, the United States has feared the consequences of running out of oil. michael barbaroįrom The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. Transcript Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Glut of Oil Hosted by Michael Barbaro produced by Alexandra Leigh Young, Michael Simon Johnson, with help from Stella Tan and Asthaa Chaturvedi, and edited by Lisa Chow and Wendy Dorr This is the energy crisis nobody saw coming. “I’m just living a nightmare,” said Ben Sheppard, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, which represents companies in the area of Texas and New Mexico that became the world’s most productive oil field last year. At the same time, the price of oil for June delivery fell by about half to roughly $10 a barrel.
That price - for May delivery - recovered on Tuesday, but not nearly to levels where oil companies can make a profit. On Monday, one closely watched price fell below zero, meaning some traders had to pay others to take crude oil off their hands. The oil industry has lived through many booms and busts, but never before have prices collapsed as they have this week. But that exhilaration has given way to despair as the coronavirus has kneecapped the economy, destroying demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel as cars sit parked in driveways and planes are consigned to remote fields and runways. Just a few months ago, the American oil industry was triumphant in its quest for energy independence, having turned the United States into the world’s biggest petroleum producer for the first time in decades. And in Montana, producers are shutting down wells and slashing salaries and benefits. Oil companies in West Texas are paying early termination fees to contract employees rather than drill new wells. HOUSTON - Workers at Marathon Petroleum’s refinery in Gallup, N.M., are turning off the valves.
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