Oil Didn’t “Crater” Today. It’s Been Cratering for Two Months.

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Did the price of oil “crater” today? You decide! Here’s the price of Brent crude, which provides a look at an international benchmark that’s not affected by storage issues in Cushing, Oklahoma. As you can see, it’s been dropping steadily all year, and the decline accelerated at the end of February when COVID-19 started to hit the economy. Today it fell 15 percent, which is a pretty healthy drop. On the other hand, today’s decline just put it back on the approximate trendline it’s been following for the past two months.

So it’s not so much that oil cratered today, it’s that oil has been plummeting by about 1 percent per day ever since February 20. The question is: how long will it keep doing this?