Price of Brent oil collapses in early trading following huge falls in US prices
Buyers of US oil were being paid to take deliveries
A rout in global oil markets continued on Tuesday morning, as traders in Europe caught up with extraordinary events in the US on Monday evening.
The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil dropped more than 29% to 19.82 US dollars per barrel, its lowest level since 1999.
It came the day after oil prices in the US briefly dipped into negative territory, meaning that buyers were being paid up to 40.32 dollars to take delivery of oil.
Demand for oil has dried up as international economies shut down to slow the spread of coronavirus.
This has meant that storage sites across the world have been filling up.
On Monday, storage had become so scarce in Texas that producers were paying buyers to take May deliveries of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil off their hands.
WTI is the most commonly used US standard for oil.
Published: by Radio NewsHub