Coronavirus lockdowns but the head of the w. H. O. Urges caution. Without National Unity and Global Solidarity. Class does. The worst use it to focus. For the 1st time ever u. S. Oil prices have crashed into negative territory after the markets benchmark fell more than 100 percent in a day producers are now paying stockpile is to take barrels off their hands as the man dries up due to the coronavirus pandemic and storage runs low this says many European Countries are actually starting to ease lockdown restrictions with some shock shutters lifting across germany that mark and the Czech Republic theres also positive news coming out of it for the 1st time the number of people currently reported to be infected with corona virus has fallen from yesterday by 20 however the World Health Organization has cautioned that easing lockdowns does not mean the pandemic is over its warned that without countries working together the worst is yet to come but lets start with those historical losses on the oil mark market in a massive one day drop west texas intermediate fellah from about 70. A half dollars a barrel to minus 37. 00 it was trading at about 60. 00 a barrel at the start of the year Global Demand has plummeted because of the coronavirus really related lock downs and travel restrictions leading to fears over a lack of Storage Space and this despite continuous attempts to counter the chaos in the Global Energy markets earlier this month russia and saudi arabia agreed to an unprecedented cut in output of almost 10000000 barrels a day to try to boost the virus markets. Lets get more on all of this now from our economics editor. Bit a historic day obviously historically low how did we get here. Well but growth weve got to go back to the beginning of the year when the whole crowd of virus and make are basically kicked off in china demand was for him then but so that a few weeks later discussions between russia and saudi arabia fell apart over the next round of conduction cuts which were absolutely necessary at the time just c o 2 bands that bans the marquiss now that particular route is still going on despite we could go both sides coming together and agreeing to Production Cuts there was also a Production Cut for the United States canada and norway to participate in which would have taken another 10000000. 00 barrels of production out of production now though the world is oversupplied we are all oil by the tune of about a 3rd or 35000000 barrels a day and thats all because airlines are stopped line people have stopped moving moving around and weve got about 3000000000 people are under lockdown so that has led to this particular crisis but in particular with the u. S. Market its a its a crises so where do they have caught all that oil that they produce now you remember that the United States was their worlds biggest exporter before this actual crisis actually started and now were seeing a situation where rigs and doug schoen are being lost in texas which employs a roughly about 10000000 people in the production of oil or oil and gas and used a lot of job losses will be reflected in this weeks job numbers when they come out on thursday remember over the last month 22000000 people have applied for Unemployment Benefits but this is not just about the United States. Price which is. Which is the benchmark for many of the global Oil Suppliers is at 25. 00 a barrel and were in a situation where countries like nigeria have had to turn to turn around to the i. M. F. And the world bank for 4 emergency loans of 7000000000. 00 they need to balance their budgets and their balance there but you say about 80. 00 a barrel now were nowhere close to that right now but what is it what are the immediate steps steps here are because of course some Oil Producing nations the open plus group as its known had come to some kind of agreement at to reduce their production so that that come to late too late has it not come into place was it not enough and how what action do they take now. Well this poll this is probably going to be pretty startling to many people but Reuters News Agency was reporting today that that saudi arabia and russia are Still Pumping Oil at record levels and theyre doing that to still market share away from each other. Saudi arabia has been trying to supplant russian supplies to europe and now theyre turning their attention to asia as well so this battle is really still going on its a hasnt gone away despite at that agreement between the 2 nations and the opec close nations to reduce production by 9700000 barrels a day what happens next well the United States are there right now theres got to be phone calls going on between washington riyadh and and to moscow to say guys we need some how were taking some of this production off the United States and can you store it away in your reserves for that for the time being so that we can get a resemblance of our markets back in the United States tomorrow morning everyone will be hoping that the june contract which starts trading tomorrow will stay above 20 dollars a barrel a bit early for the moment thank you for that lets cross the crest and 70 has been monitoring the markets in new york so christine how did the stock market respond to this news. Well the stocks fell sharply on monday retreating from 2 weeks of gains in fact on this news Energy Stocks in particular lead the declines on wall street exxon mobil chevron all down more than 4 percent and of course this crude price this unprecedented negative territory negative 37. 00 a barrel you might ask how is that even possible. Analysts say that very weak demand coming at the time when the monthly contract was due for prices is what shook things up basically producers are going to have to pay to get the oil taken off their hands because its abouta is just saying the capacity to store the oil here is not there anymore theyre estimating it could be 3 weeks time before theres no room to store anymore or oil so this took a toll on the markets today but theyre still up some 29 percent almost from their low point and march the last 2 weeks have seen the markets. On some positive news the thought that the spread of the coronavirus risk reading here in the United States and that there was a promising treatment that might. Make things better Going Forward but still a lot of concern obviously about the economy in the country given the horrible Economic Data that is out there. There was concern today that. Congress was not able to come up with a new loan program for Small Businesses that money has been depleted investors were hoping for some news on that it didnt happen and of course weve got 22000000 people now who have lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus so all of this is adding to very volatile market down in particular today with the help of these plummeting oil prices chris salumi with the latest from the stock market in new york kristen thank you. Well now john hendren in chicago will look at the Economic Impact that the Oil Price Slump was having even before mondays fall. Across american oil country the pumps are shutting down since the coronavirus locked much of the western world in their homes the floor has dropped out of the oil market is a gas station selling gasoline for 99 cents a gallon now you would think wow thats great and theyre pretty well run and there was a line of people there to fill the course the question is where are you going to go the price of the benchmark american crude west texas intermediate has collapsed from 60. 00 a barrel in january to below 20 in the past week across the u. S. The price at the pump is lower than its been in years big even at rush hour if you are buying the International Energy agency says the worlds appetite for oil hasnt been this low since 1995 especially hit hard the fracking industry that turned the u. S. Oil industry into a net exporter since 2011 Fracking Companies which break rocks to find fuel meet oil above 30. 00 a barrel to make a profit but its not its not that just that it will come you know its the Oil Service Companies its the little towns in the oil that you know the motels the diners restaurants you know those types of things that the Ripple Effect is tremendous when you go move out from the all gas company and all the ancillary companies that provide them service isnt arts and so on im afraid its going to be ugly the 1st casualty came on april 1st denver based Whiting Petroleum declare bankruptcy if prices dont increase soon whiting will likely become only the 1st of hundreds of oil and related companies to do so right now do you think theyre like well if. Were not. Going to he may whatevers. Day by day situation so the oil industry waits and worries until all the pumps return to service john hendren aljazeera chicago jeff colgan is a professor of Political Science at Brown University hes also the author of petro aggression when Oil Causes War he joins us now from providence in rhode island via skype sir thank you for joining us here on aljazeera were you surprised by these latest developments or do you think you and perhaps a lot of other people should have seen it coming well i said on aljazeera about 10 days ago that the price of oil was going down and lo and behold this is what we have but this is partly because of the fundamentals of the oil physical deliveries but mostly because of the Financial Markets and how investors were holding or Oil Contracts that come due tomorrow and they suddenly dont want the oil theres nowhere to put it so you say that these contracts are due tomorrow so are we seeing a blip right now the price actually being negative and it will stabilize a little bit after those contracts or how do you see this playing out over the next few days well right now the price for june deliveries of oil is about 20. 00 a barrel so its still positive over that medium term and we are seeing that sharp downturn as Financial Markets figure out that in fact we are maxing out the Storage Capabilities and Oil Companies will adjust from that so i mean the Storage Capabilities i guess a lot of countries are trying to get round that because we are expecting a lot of the lockdowns to lift in the u. S. And across the world does that mean that effectively the Oil Producers could kind of weather this storm because it really is just a matter of you know the world effectively opening up again hopefully in a month or so. Well this sharp Lower Oil Prices is temporary but the. Prices that are you know positive but still very low thats going to persist and that could be months of that and thats going to do real economic damage particularly in north america where you have this concentrated storage problem and theres almost well there are 2 issues more than 2 but lets divide into what is the coronavirus locked down that of course is blocked car travel air travel and a lot of the reasons why people would use petrol at all and i suppose the other one is a lot of battles between all producing countries and then over production so if the lockdown eases do we still have the issue of the overproduction right youre exactly right that there are those 2 issues and more it was only 10 days ago that President Trump ois trumpeting his masterclass a negotiation between saudi arabia and russia but this is this is whats happened right so this is not the result that he was looking for and yes i think we are going to have continued battles between Oil Producers where russia and saudi arabia and the United States in particular are competing for market share but saudi arabia has the lowest costs of production and the other 2 are going to be forced i think to cut more than they had hoped to do and there will be bankruptcies in the United States it do you think that those 2 countries i mean russia saudi arabia specifically are perhaps surprised by the fact that now going to you know that now storing the all in such an issue and do you think that that will shape their future actions when it comes to potential of a production. Well were seeing a big difference between Oil Producers who have access to the ports and can store their oil on ocean going ships or they can become floating storage versus the landlocked Oil Producers which includes the United States and russia and canada those of those 3 are going to be particularly affected by the storage problems in the short term jeff colgan professor of Political Science at Brown University and author of petro aggression when Oil Causes War sir thank you so much for having joined us thank you right well lets cross to our White House Correspondent kimberly how kimberly we are of course waiting for the news briefing by the president that he holds every day pretty much about the corner Virus Outbreak this is and out of legal ng to come up how do you think its going down in the white house that oil has reached a negative value in the u. S. Well not well i can only echo what our previous guest said that the u. S. President had earned praise from even some of his critics for what looked like a deal to try and cut the production and get rid reaching to go she was saudi arabia as well as russia but the problem with that is the the sort of cuts in production were set to take place next month and so that did not alleviate the concerns of these producers who saw that they were nearing capacity know that next month they will hit capacity now the other thing that had been reported here in the United States is the fact that there had been reports the troubled ministration was going to pale Oil Companies not to pump oil and others to keep it in the ground as part of the nations Strategic Reserves but again that doesnt seem to have alleviated the nervous markets either now i should tell you that you know the United States has experience shocks are all shocks in the past the 1970 s. In particular 2 significant ok sions as some members on capitol hill thought they had put in place policies to try and alleviate these kinds of situations from happening again but there really werent the tools put in place to deal with the oversupply issues that were seeing right now so washington not just the white house but also on capitol hill is watching this very carefully trying to figure out what to do it this is really compounded for a president whos not only concerned about the impacts in the oil markets but how this will reverberate in the u. S. Economy an economy hes trying very hard to get back on track when next month when some of these social distancing guidelines for krone viruses are supposed to subside at least in the beginning phase one stage so this is a real conundrum for this u. S. President he has been repeatedly trying to be the cheerleader beery very sunny about the projections moving forward of the u. S. Economy his reelection chances he believes seem to hinge on this so the president is really in a bit of a pickle if you will thats really in. Understatement given the fact that not only has he got this following historic lows in prices in terms of oil but hes also got the surge in unemployment and hes also got the collapse of countless Small Businesses in the United States it just seems to keep having a domino effect and people keep looking to him for solutions and really he doesnt have the answers so these are the tough questions hes going to have to face this briefing was set to begin at 21 g. M. T. Its now been pushed to 2130 and were watching to see if this will get pushed back again as the bad news seems to continue for the trumpet ministration as the president said to face reporters and try and provide answers but will be taking it live whenever it does happen and im sure well be talking again about it kimberly for the moment Kimberly Halkett at the white house thank you. And coming up on this news hour from london a 2nd night of riots in a paris suburb or a script lockdown the rules threaten the childs social peace. And brazils president defends his controversial appearance with protestors on sunday and says he wants social distancing measures lifted this week. Some shops have reopened in germany as europes largest economy slowly restarts public life after a 4 week shutdown to stop the spread of coron