Only the old hands at the Coffeyville oil refinery could remember anything like the prices posted this month. The small Kansas plant in the heart of rural America was offering just $1.75 a barrel for Wyoming sweet crude. With more than two billion people on virus lockdown from India to California, energy demand has plunged. In corners of the U.S., Canada, Russia and China, oil prices at the well-head are collapsing under the weight of an unprecedented glut.
And with it, the industry is bracing for something that last happened on this scale 35 years ago: producers shutting down their wells as pumping crude makes no economic sense. “I have never seen anything like this in the markets,” said Torbjorn Tornqvist, the co-founder of Gunvor Group Ltd., a large commodity trading house. “We’ve never seen anything even close to today.”
The oil market — hit by the double blow of a demand slump and a supply surge as Saudi Arabia and Russia wage a price war — is battling a surplus of as much as 20% of global consumption. The consequences are brutal: prices are now low enough to force a widespread suspension of production, or a shut-in as it’s known in the industry. For those waging the price war, it counts as a victory — as long as the shut-ins happen elsewhere.