This will all pass eventually. Oil will cost money again at some point. Still technically costs money for us plebs to actually get any use of. It's just that some of the uber rich are going to be losing some money off the whole deal that they can't simply wait out.
It's a weird occurrence to be sure, but it's small beans compared to the rest of the economy right now.
Well... you say that but I was already hearing that the oil industry was in a pretty alarmed state after the Saudi-Russian dispute first happened, and that's hardly improved. A sustained price-per-barrel below $40 was described as a "mortal" threat to fracking and more expensive ways of getting oil, and below... I forget what the number was exactly, $20, $22 per barrel? Was described as a threat to the entire American oil industry. It's currently sitting at $21 per barrel for June, and something like $0.56 for the one that went negative. The other thing that's rough for the industry is a lot of oil companies were apparently, quote, "over-leveraged" and had a lot of debt. Even a short time with prices this low could cause bankruptcy.
All in all, it has the potential to do what the environmentalist movement could not, and simply shatter the oil industry's strength.
Thus far, despite the amount of follows it seems to have gotten in various states, the actual protests seem to have been pretty small, which is reassuring.
Yeah the protest in Texas had dozens, dozens! Assemble in front of the statehouse. It's hard to really grasp the public opinion on an issue like this when by definition the supporters of social distancing aren't going outside.