COVID-19 Impacts on Oil Markets and Politics

As part of the USAEE Podcast Series, Severin Borenstein and Ryan Kellogg discuss how the sudden downturn in oil demand is affecting suppliers and the politics of oil in the United States. How does the extreme price drop affect US production levels from existing wells and drilling of new wells? What makes sense for U.S. policy on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when oil futures markets are in extreme contango? Ryan and Severin also discuss suggestions among some suppliers and politicians that the United States should coordinate with OPEC and Russia to reduce world supply in order to “rationalize prices.”