With space to store oil scarce, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for May delivery ended trading at -$37.63 a barrel ahead of Tuesday’s close for futures contracts — when traders who buy and sell the commodity for profit would have had to take physical possession of it.

“It’s a contract for something that nobody wants to buy,” said Matt Smith of ClipperData.

The remarkable decline comes as the petroleum industry emerges as one of the corners of the global economy made most vulnerable by government shutdowns to limit the spread of coronavirus.

The commodity has been further weakened by a battle for market share that raged much of the spring between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

A deal announced last week between OPEC and its peers to cut production by about 10 million barrels per-day from May appears not to have been enough, while the closely-monitored storage capacity at Cushing, Oklahoma was almost full as of Monday morning.

“It’s a dump at all cost as no one… wants delivery of oil, with Cushing storage facilities filling by the minute,” AxiCorp’s Stephen Innes said.

“It hasn’t taken long for the market to recognize that the OPEC+ deal will not, in its present form, be enough to balance oil markets.”

Still, Smith noted that Monday’s negative price only affects oil deliveries due Tuesday.

US oil futures for delivery in May also fell sharply, by 18 percent, but finished at $20.43 per barrel.

The European benchmark contract, London Brent North Sea oil for June delivery, ended down nine percent at $25.57 per barrel.

“This moment is of course historical and could not better illustrate the price-utopia that the market has been in since March, when the full scale of the oversupply problem started to become evident but the market remained oblivious,” said Rystad Energy’s Oil Markets Analyst Louise Dickson.

“Since then traders have sent prices up and down on speculation, hopes, tweets and wishful thinking. But now reality is sinking in.”

The cratering of the oil market prompted more selling on Wall Street, where all three indices were decisively negative in the final hour of trading.

Most European markets ended the day higher as governments start to consider how and when to ease the lockdowns that have crippled the global economy.

Italy, Spain, France and Britain reported drops in daily death tolls and slowing infection rates, while Germany began allowing some shops to reopen and Norway restarted nurseries

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The British move follows the imposition of strict lockdowns in France, Spain, and Italy, and slightly looser restrictions elsewhere, as Europe reels from a pandemic that the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned is accelerating

Nearly 16,500 people have died from COVID-19 about the world, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 101,000 of the 379,000 people who have been diagnosed with the disease have recovered.

I’m Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur with Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic
The Philippine health ministry confirmed 39 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the country’s total number of infections to 501.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told reporters that 33 people have so far died from the virus while 19 people have recovered.

Separately, the economic planning agency raised concern about the state of the economy, saying there was a possibility it could contract as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

South Korea has reported 76 new cases of the coronavirus, bring the total number of infections to 9,037, Yonhap news agency reported health authorities as saying

South Korea says 19 of 1,444 passengers who arrived from Europe on Sunday were found to have the coronavirus, the first cases detected after authorities began testing all people coming from the continent.
South Korean Health Ministry official Yoon Tae-ho also said that 101 of some 1,200 passengers who arrived from Europe on Monday have exhibited fever or respiratory symptoms.

While the country’s infections have been slowing, there’s concern about the reintroduction of COVID-19 amid broadening outbreaks in the West.

South Korea says it will fully fund the treatment for virus carriers regardless of their nationality. Even if they test negative, South Korean nationals arriving from Europe or foreigners who enter the country from Europe on long-term stay visas are required .

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