From Middle East to USA, coronavirus impact transforms oil industry’s dynamics

From Middle East to USA, coronavirus impact transforms oil industry’s dynamics

The fossil fuel industry will inevitably feel the pain from the coronavirus impact more acutely than other economic sectors.. Equity markets collapsed on March 9 as the rapidly spreading coronavirus fans fears over the global economy, while a crash in oil prices added to the panic with energy firms taking a hammering.. March 2020 will go down in oil history as the month that changed the energy world. Daniel Yergin, the pre-eminent historian of the oil industry, described the past month as "unlike anything in the history of the oil industry," as the world has locked itself down in the face of the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).. There the three-year old pact between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers - led respectively by Saudi Arabia and Russia, known as OPEC+ - fell apart over Saudi proposals to deepen and prolong output cuts in order to prop up the price of crude.. The unavoidable fate for some oil fields will be to "shut in" - to physically stop producing and leave the oil in the ground as long as prices stay so low.. Others have pointed to the undoubtedly negative effects of "price wars" on the