Around the world, the crash in crude prices has created huge financial headaches for oil producers.
Simply put, much of the oil they were hoping to pull out of the ground is too expensive to generate a profit. That has led to huge cuts in investment in new exploration and production. Those spending cuts are also helping to offset a steep drop in revenues after the price of oil fell in half since last summer.
Meanwhile, the world is awash in oil. In the U.S., another 5 million barrels flowed into storage tanks, raising the total to 471 million barrels—well above the previous peak of 400 million barrels reached in April, 2014, according to Genscape, an oil research firm.