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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Kanika was allowed to leave after her sixth test came back negative on Monday. Her fifth test on Saturday had also come back negative but the doctors wanted to be sure about her health and decided to discharge her only after two back-to-back tests came back negative.

Kanika’s troubles, however, are likely to increase after she is discharged from hospital. Three FIRs have been filed against Kanika on charges of negligence for attending various social events in the city despite being infected with coronavirus and having been instructed by the authorities to isolate herself at her home.
She is the first Bollywood celebrity to test positive for the deadly virus in the country. In a statement on Instagram, which she later deleted, Kanika narrated how she developed signs of flu on her return from London. She claimed that she was unaware of the Corona infection till she tested positive.

Earlier, the singer had shared a health update on Instagram after testing Covid-19 positive. She wrote, “Going off to bed. Sending you all loving vibes. Stay safe you guys. Thank you for your concern but I am not in the ICU. I am fine. I hope my next test is negative. Waiting to go home to my kids and family miss them!”

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