Crude prices in America’s oil capital are getting dangerously close to zero. Buyers bidding for crude in Texas, the birthplace of the shale revolution, are offering as little as $2 a barrel for some oil streams, a precipitous markdown from a month ago.
The slumping value of physical barrels is raising the possibility that Texas producers may soon have to pay customers to take crude off their hands.
Negative prices have already hit more obscure corners of the American oil market amid a bearish trifecta of collapsing demand, swelling supplies and limited storage capacity.
The first U.S. grade to bid under zero was a small landlocked crude stream known as Wyoming Asphalt Sour, which went for negative 19 cents a barrel last month.