US president Donald Trump has sought to downplay the oil price crash as the market collapsed into negative territory. ‘It’s for the short term. A lot of people got caught’, Trump said during his daily coronavirus briefing. He added: ‘Nobody’s ever heard of negative oil before,’ before reassuring that ‘it’s for a short term’. North America’s oil producers have run out of space to store an unprecedented oversupply of crude left by the reduced demand during the pandemic. Trump says he will look into stopping oil shipments from Saudi Arabia, and that his administration will either ask Congress for permission to buy oil, ‘or we will store it’
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Oil, gas and mining