US oil price plunges almost 40% to 22-year low

US oil

New York oil crashed Monday to nearly $11 per barrel, the lowest level since 1998, extending a dizzying plunge to almost 40 percent on abundant supplies and virus-sapped demand.

Just before 1200 GMT, the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for May delivery tanked to $11.31 per barrel, as the market was hit also by technical trade ahead of the contract’s expiry later Monday.

Trade, however, and the very sharp losses were technically driven as investors closed out their positions ahead of the May contract expiry due later Monday so that they would not be obliged to actually take delivery of the oil.

“The real problem of the global supply-demand imbalance has started to really manifest itself in prices,” said Rystad Energy analyst Bjornar Tonhaugen.

“As production continues relatively unscathed, storage is filling up by the day. The world is using less and less oil and producers now feel how this translates in prices.”

The European benchmark contract, London Brent North Sea oil for June delivery, was meanwhile down 3.8 percent at $27.01 per barrel.

Signs that the coronavirus may have peaked in Europe and the United States failed to lift Asian and European financial markets generally.

Traders are instead becoming more and more concerned that oil storage facilities are reaching their limits, as stockpiles continue to build owing to the crash in demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Analysts said this month’s agreement between OPEC and its peers to slash output by 10 million barrels a day was having little impact because of the virus lockdowns and travel restrictions that are keeping billions of people at home.

WTI was hit particularly hard as its main US storage facilities in Cushing, Oklahoma, were filling up, with Trifecta Consultants analyst Sukrit Vijayakar saying refineries were not processing crude fast enough.

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