On 20 April 2020, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price dropped to negative levels for the first time in history. This study examines the factors underlying the historic oil price fluctuation during the Covid-19 pandemic. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach incorporating a structural break is applied to the daily series from 17 January to 14 September 2020 to analyze long-run relationships and short-run dynamics. The results reveal that increases in Covid-19 pandemic cases, US economic policy uncertainty, and expected stock market volatility contributed to the fall in the WTI crude oil price, whereas the fall in the global stock markets appears to significantly reduce the fall. Furthermore, the Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war and speculation on oil futures are shown to play a critical part in the collapse of the oil markets. The findings are consistent with our expectations. Although it is reasonable to assume that the solution to this oil crisis is a pick-up in global oil demand, which will occur only when the novel coronavirus is defeated, this study proposes policy recommendations to cope with the current oil price crash.

2020年4月20日，西德克萨斯中质原油（WTI）价格历史上首次跌至负值。本研究探讨了 Covid-19 大流行期间历史性油价波动的潜在因素。结合结构性突破的自回归分布式滞后 (ARDL) 边界测试方法应用于 2020 年 1 月 17 日至 9 月 14 日的每日序列，以分析长期关系和短期动态。结果显示，Covid-19大流行病例的增加、美国经济政策的不确定性以及预期的股市波动导致了WTI原油价格的下跌，而全球股市的下跌似乎显着减少了跌幅。此外，俄罗斯与沙特阿拉伯的石油价格战和石油期货投机被证明在石油市场崩溃中发挥了关键作用。研究结果与我们的预期一致。尽管可以合理地假设，解决这场石油危机的办法是全球石油需求的回升，而这只有在新型冠状病毒被击败后才会发生，但这项研究提出了应对当前油价暴跌的政策建议。