Oil Futures Collapse

When I go to the gas station tonight, will they pay me? It's at -$18 a barrel now and got down to -$36.

Donnie Pump is useless, why would anyone think otherwise

Same old problems: no strategy; inability to deal with reality (the virus, in this case); poor choice of allies (many of whom loathe each other); outdated policies (favoring fossil fuels); lack of popular support; etc.

Why is this significant? What are oil futures? Serious question. Asking for a friend.

Do people still think keeping the economy shut down is a good idea?

So the oil is worthless because there’s no demand, no land-based storage left, and you have to pay to store it in tankers offshore. Another month & they’ll run out of ships.

The consequences? Hard to say. More green energy that doesn’t have to be expensively produced, transported, and stored, I guess. Sun shines everywhere.

Gas should be free within a few days, or they'll dump it on the ground?

jesseriley wrote:

So the oil is worthless because there’s no demand, no land-based storage left, and you have to pay to store it in tankers offshore. Another month & they’ll run out of ships.

The consequences? Hard to say. More green energy that doesn’t have to be expensively produced, transported, and stored, I guess. Sun shines everywhere.

More green energy when the oil companies will pay me to drive? Seems unlikely

The real fun begins as economies around the world begin to reopen and worldwide oil production is at zero.

Hourunner wrote:

The real fun begins as economies around the world begin to reopen and worldwide oil production is at zero.

Because the oil companies will be caught completely off guard, and all the excess reserves will be used before they can react?

Or maybe another, much more likely, scenario?

joedirt wrote:

Do people still think keeping the economy shut down is a good idea?

Yes.

@hourrunner wrote:

Hourunner wrote:

The real fun begins as economies around the world begin to reopen and worldwide oil production is at zero.

Because the oil companies will be caught completely off guard, and all the excess reserves will be used before they can react?

Or maybe another, much more likely, scenario?

No, because the oil companies themselves will have laid off a large percentage of their workforce and the companies and contractors who drill for them will have gone out of business. It will take a while to start drilling again and even then most companies will be very wary of a repeat come this fall if they’re even drilling again by then. We may see a swing from negative prices per barrel to well over $100 per barrel by mid-summer. Although I do see huge bailouts coming for companies that net billions per quarter.

Green energy is very expensive and requires government subsidies.

It’s also not as green as you have been led to believe. The sun doesn’t shine every where all the time. And when it doesn’t then you needed to have stored excess energy in batteries which are not green or cheap. Or you need some other type of spinning reserve.

The cheapest energy source always wins.

CNN says that hundreds of US oil companies could go bankrupt. I didn't realize there were that many? Maybe we should start a gofundme campaign to help these struggling companies.

You are confusing production with exploration. Exploration, drilling, takes time to restart.

Production is turning on valves to get oil of out the ground.

Refining is the problem. If refineries are shut down then they take time to restart. Restarting is when most refinery accidents occur.

Co-Flounder wrote:

You are confusing production with exploration. Exploration, drilling, takes time to restart.

Production is turning on valves to get oil of out the ground.

Refining is the problem. If refineries are shut down then they take time to restart. Restarting is when most refinery accidents occur.

And who is going to be there to turn the valves on when they are all out of business? Turning the valves on is an oversimplification. Agreed refineries are a problem too but a lot more goes into getting the oil out of the ground or seabed and to refineries than opening a valve via ship or pipeline.

Co-Flounder wrote:

Green energy is very expensive and requires government subsidies.

It’s also not as green as you have been led to believe. The sun doesn’t shine every where all the time. And when it doesn’t then you needed to have stored excess energy in batteries which are not green or cheap. Or you need some other type of spinning reserve.

The cheapest energy source always wins.

I disagree with your first statement; I agree (sort of) with your last statement.

One of the worst things that Trump ever did was lying to coal miners by telling them he would bring them back. I'm pretty sure Trump knew he was lying; if not, he was just really ignorant of capitalism, which doesn't seem likely. The reason the coal industry has done so poorly has less to do with government regulation and more to do with the price of natural gas. It's cheaper than coal, so power companies prefer it to coal. Government regulation of the coal industry doesn't help, but you can see 3 years after Trump's election that employment in the coal industry is pretty much the same as it was when Trump took office. And that's with Trump dismantling every coal industry regulation that he could.

Anyway, green energy is not as expensive as it used to be. I have no idea if government subsidies still benefit the industry; I tend to doubt that as that seems like something Trump would have ended 3 years ago.

Yep...just filled up my tank with 24 gallons and Shell paid me $42.36.

i literally know nothing wrote:

Why is this significant? What are oil futures? Serious question. Asking for a friend.

In short: oil futures trade by the month, i.e. if you bought May oil futures in November last year, those futures expire tomorrow. This means, since these contracts involve the actual, physical delivery of the underlying product (i.e. oil) at expiry, if you hold one of these contracts, you are due to take physical delivery of oil tomorrow.

However, since you're just a guy sitting in front of his computer in his underwear, paying for the shipment and storage of barrels of oil isn't something you can very easily do. As a result, you have to get out of the contract by selling it (at a loss) to someone who can handle these logistics, like a refinery or airline. However, due to the extreme cratering in demand and over-supply of oil, these businesses who would usually buy the contracts do not physically have the space/capacity to do so. Since failing to receive delivery of the oil tomorrow would result in substantial penalties, you know have to go and offer to pay someone to take the contract off your hands - hence negative prices.

Importantly: this is not a true reflection of the market price of oil - it's just a combination of timing and weird market factors/contracts that have caused an absurd-seeming outcome. The price of June futures (and beyond) is still positive, showing that the value of oil is still greater than the cost of extracting and storing it.