On Friday, CME/NYMEX WTI Cushing crude oil for April delivery closed at $44.76/bbl, down more than $16/bbl, or about 27%, since New Year’s Day. The declines in natural gas and NGL prices were not quite as severe, but only because those commodities were hit harder than crude during 2019. Even before COVID-19 landed on the market, energy prices were already under pressure from continued record production levels from U.S. shale, weakening demand, a mostly mild winter and a general investor pall over all things carbon. The threat of a global coronavirus pandemic was all it took to push things over the edge. So now what? Of course, nobody knows. But we can contemplate what this all could mean for energy markets, based on what we’ve seen in recent market statistics and price behavior. So that’s what we’ll do in today’s blog.
Free Fallin’ – COVID-19, Declining Energy Commodity Prices and What Might Lie Ahead
