The price crude oil in the United States of America turned negative on Monday as demand dried up.
It means suppliers are paying to have oil taken off them as storage capacities ran out.
U.S benchmark crude Western Texas Intermediate (WTI) traded at $-37 at some point with Brent trading at $25.97 per barrel.
The outbreak of the Coronavirus that has led to very low demand of oil as several countries went into lockdown with factories closed across the globe.
The severe drop on Monday was driven in part by a technicality of the global oil market. Oil is traded on its future price and May futures contracts are due to expire on Tuesday. Traders were keen to offload those holdings to avoid having to take delivery of the oil and incur storage costs, the BBC News reported.
The current price is huge blow to Nigeria which depends heavily on petroleum revenue to run the government and finance infrastructure projects. Already, the spread of Covid-19 has led to shut of the nation commercial hub, Lagos and the capital Abuja.
The Federal Government last month reviewed its 2020 budget downward by about 30 percent with benchmark price for crude oil pegged at $30 per barrel.
