Two weeks ago, the price of oil collapsed to below zero for the first time in history. Crude oil’s “Black Monday,” on April 20, witnessed the so-far lowest point of the crash. In a single day, the price of West Texas Intermediate oil (the American benchmark) dropped over 300 percent to negative $37.63 a barrel. Facing a glutted market and jammed up storage capacities, traders literally paid people to take oil off their hands.

Incredibly, the crash happened just a week after President Trump brokered a much vaunted deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia, in which members and allies of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to cut roughly 10 percent of global crude oil supply in order to prop up prices. It was the biggest such cut in history, yet it proved wholly insufficient to counter the estimated loss of a third of the world’s oil consumption.

It is this sudden collapse in demand that makes this crisis distinct. As a “liquid” commodity, oil’s “just-in-time” supply chain is meant to flow seamlessly from wellhead to pipeline to refinery — and then out to consumers. It is extremely expensive and geologically risky to “shut in” production and stop the flow. Only limited storage possibilities exist and so, as a consequence, hundreds of oil tankers costing $200,000 a day are simply idling in the sea with nowhere to deliver their oil. Oil is the dirty commodity that greases life under capitalism. When life as we know grinds to a halt, oil is rendered redundant.