Trump’s Cure for Negative Oil Prices Is … More Oil?

As the old saying goes, the cure for low oil prices is funneling federal dollars to over-indebted producers, thereby delaying shutting in supply (or something like that).

President Donald Trump has been floating various ideas to revive America’s frackers since the jab of a Saudi-Russian price war and the upper cut of Covid-19 sent them reeling. These have included such novelties as paying producers to keep oil in the ground and branding it a strategic reserve. After oil closed in negative territory on Monday, some wags suggested frackers might pay the feds to take the oil under that scheme. But no, this doesn’t work like that. The idea is for money to flow from Washington to the shale fields, not the other way around. I would bet Trump’s “funds available” tweet on Tuesday — henceforth forever known in oil circles as The Day After — is closer to where this is going than, say, “funding secured.”