Stuart Varney: Oil crash threatens US position as global energy leader
Fox Business host Stuart Varney reacts to the crash in oil prices amid COVID-19 and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's deleted tweet cheering the plunge.
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Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney reacted on Tuesday to U.S. oil prices plummeting in historic fashion, prompting a “deplorable” tweet by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., that has since been deleted.
“Nobody expected oil demand around the world to crash as much as it has,” Varney said on “Fox & Friends.”
“We used to use 100 million barrels of oil a day. Now we’re using about 60, 65 million barrels of oil a day,” he continued. “No one could really see that global shutdown coming.”
Oil prices turned negative for the first time in history on Monday as traders unloaded positions ahead of the May contracts' expiration.
Ongoing concerns over swelling oil inventories, with little demand to ease the pileup due to the ongoing fallout from the coronavirus, sent the U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery plunging 305 percent to a record low -$36.73 per barrel. At a price below zero, buyers would be paid to take delivery as there are costs associated with transportation and storage.
“This crash in the price of oil, and it's all the way down as you know, that's not good news. It's bad news all around,” Varney said on Tuesday.
STOCKS TANK AS OIL FALLS BELOW ZERO FOR FIRST TIME EVER
“It means that American drillers will stop drilling, stop producing because if you can't sell it, you can't store it, you don't bring it out on the ground. Number two, it means job losses, Texas, North Dakota in particular, bankruptcies for smaller, less well capitalized drillers, there are a lot of bankruptcies coming, and a temporary halt to America's exports of oil. That would damage our position as global energy leaders,” he explained.
“It gives China a smaller advantage,” he continued. “They’ve got no oil and the oil that they're buying now that their factories are reopening, that's dirt cheap. That's an economic advantage to them.”
On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the news that oil prices had turned negative.
"You absolutely love to see it," Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described "democratic socialist," wrote on Twitter. She was responding to a post which stated: "Oil prices now at ‘negative values.'”
"This along with record low interest rates means it's the right time for a worker-led, mass investment in green infrastructure to save our planet. *cough*," Ocasio-Cortez continued.
“I think it's deplorable that she put out that tweet in the first place and I'm not surprised that she took it down,” Varney said on Tuesday.
Ocasio-Cortez has pushed to radically restructure the U.S. economy with what progressives call a “Green New Deal,” which could cost as much as $93 trillion, according to a study co-authored by the former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Ocasio-Cortez's former chief of staff has admitted the Green New Deal was intended to remake the economy, not avert climate change.
“I'm not surprised that she absolutely loves to see it,” Varney said reacting to the tweet.
“First of all, this virus and the global shutdown has reduced CO2 emissions more than any other event in human history as far as I know, that fits very well with the Green New Deal. Secondly, she is a socialist. She has no time for the capitalist stock market so, yeah, she is absolutely loves to see it,” he continued.
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Varney then noted that Ocasio-Cortez deleted the tweet “because she now realizes, perhaps, that that is really being gleeful about human misery and that's not the position a politician should take.”
Fox Business’ Jonathan Garber and Stuart Varney and Fox News’ Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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