Trump tells energy, treasury secretaries to make funds available for US oil industry

US President Donald Trump has told the secretaries of energy and treasury to come up with a plan to make funds available to US oil and gas companies, Trump tweeted.

Trump’s announcement follows a day after US crude prices plummeted below zero for the first time in history as market technicalities and localized storage issues in the US market led to producers paying buyers to take oil off their hands.

“We will never let the great US oil & gas industry down,” the tweet read.

Oil prices have fallen by unprecedented levels as the coronavirus pandemic has severely curtailed demand for petroleum products, triggering chronic market oversupply.

The ramifications for the US oil industry have been drastic, with shale oil producers pushed to the brink. Shale oil producers have already been suffering with the fall in oil prices since the coronavirus crisis began to effect the energy market, with some already falling to bankruptcy, and others closing production down.

The world’s top oil producers pulled together a historic deal last week that should remove about 20 percent of current oil production from world markets to face up to the evaporation of global demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Oil prices have continued to fall since the deal was signed however, with Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the largest oil producers in the world, both saying Sunday they are open to further output cuts to stem crude’s downward spiral.

Meanwhile, the US oil industry remains undecided on output cuts. The Texas oil and gas regulator is due to decide Tuesday if it will mandate supply cuts, the state accounts for 40 percent of US production.

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