Oil Prices Rebound above $0 Per Barrel

The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) index for the May delivery fell to a record low of minus $40 a barrel on Monday, the first time it had fallen into negative territory, to rebound on Tuesday above $0 per barrel at $0.01.

"The drop was aggravated by traders seeking to offload any obligations to take a physical product before the contract expired today as the storage capacity reached capacity at the delivery point in Cushing, Oklahoma," Financial times reported.

Analysts said that the Brent crude and WTI contracts are likely to face more downward pressure in the coming weeks, given that the abundance of supply does not show any signs of decline.

Plans of unprecedented supply cuts by some of the world's largest producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia have so far failed to compensate for the drop in oil demand.

Meanwhile, OPEC officials and delegates have sought to talk about the market. Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday it was ready to take additional measures, along with other producers who are part of the OPEC + alliance, to support the oil market and stabilize the market. The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted a cabinet statement as saying: "The Kingdom is committed to Russia to implement production cuts during the next two years."

On its part, Russia played down the importance of the collapse in crude oil prices, saying that there was no need to consider it a "terrible" event after the Ural blend, which relies loosely on Brent, fell to its lowest level since 2002 on Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "The chaos with the futures contracts is completely speculative, it is just a commercial issue." "Of course there is no need to give this grisly color."

The oil meltdown also underscored the weakness of Donald Trump, who pressed Saudi Arabia and Russia to agree to supply restrictions in an attempt to support the domestic oil shale industry.

US and European stocks fell, partly affected by weak energy stocks. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index decreased by 2.8 per cent, while in Europe the Stoxx 600 index on the continent level decreased by 3 per cent.

In fixed income, the yield on 10 years US treasury bonds fell 0.08 percentage points to 0.541% as investors retreated to basic government debt security.