Asking Opec to help save the US oil sector was not part of Donald Trump’s vision of “American energy dominance”. The US president’s role in brokering a deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia to end a damaging price war was intended to prop up oil.
Instead the deal fell flat, unable to overcome the collapse in global demand due to coronavirus, and with it went the shale revolution that transformed the US into the world’s top oil producer. The defining moment arrived on what traders have dubbed crude’s “Black Monday” when US oil prices plunged below zero for the first time, leaving even hardened oil executives wondering how a business forced to effectively pay customers to take their oil could recover.
The industry, whose growth allowed Mr Trump to boast of cutting US dependence on Middle Eastern oil and freed his hand to sanction energy exporters from Iran to Russia, is now on its knees. Producers across the US oil patch, many with higher costs than international rivals, are in acute distress, pleading for Washington to ease the pain by cutting foreign oil imports or including them in coronavirus bailouts to stave off bankruptcy and job losses.