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Yesterday, U.S. oil prices did something wild — they went negative. That means traders were actually paying people to take oil contracts off of their hands. Camila Domonoske covers energy for NPR's Business Desk, and she has been watching this unfold. Good morning.
昨天，美国油价出现疯狂的变化——负增长。这意味着贸易商实际上是在付钱让人们从其手中拿走石油合约。卡米拉·多莫诺斯克负责NPR新闻财经组的报道，她一直在关注事态进展。早上好。
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE1: Good morning, Noel.
卡米拉·多莫诺斯克连线：早上好，诺埃尔。
KING: All right, so how unusual is this?
金：好，这有多不同寻常？
DOMONOSKE: I'm running out of synonyms2 for unprecedented3.
多莫诺斯克：我已经找不到前所未有的同义词了。
KING: (Laughter).
金：（笑）。
DOMONOSKE: The system, the exchange where this trading happens, it had to be changed to allow negative numbers. It had never done this before. I spoke4 to Leah McGrath Goodman. She's the author of "The Asylum5: The Renegades Who Hijacked6 The World's Oil Market," and she put it like this.
多莫诺斯克：这个系统，即进行交易的交易所，必须做出改变以允许负数。其此前从未这样做过。我采访了莉亚·麦格拉斯·古德曼。她是《避难所：绑架世界石油市场的叛徒》一书的作者，她是这样说的。
LEAH MCGRATH GOODMAN: This negative chart, you know, you can print it out and frame it and show it to your children.
莉亚·麦格拉斯·古德曼：这个负增长图表，你可以打印出来，裱起来，给你的孩子看。
DOMONOSKE: Yeah. This was bonkers.
多莫诺斯克：对。这真是疯狂。
KING: Bonkers. Unprecedented. Why did it happen?
金：疯狂。史无前例。为什么会发生这种情况？
DOMONOSKE: So have you ever tried to sell something on Craigslist and it's, you know, a nice sofa, but you're moving out tomorrow and it has to go? You're going to take a much lower price than you want, and you might even have to pay someone to haul it away. And that's pretty much what happened to West Texas Intermediate crude futures7.
多莫诺斯克：你有没有试过在Craigslist网站上卖东西？比如，你有一个很不错的沙发，但你明天就要搬出去，所以必须解决这个沙发。你要接受比你想要的低得多的价格，甚至可能不得不花钱雇人来把它拖走。西得克萨斯中质原油期货的情况差不多就是这样。
So investors8 holding contracts for oil to be delivered in the future — in this case, in May — they have a deadline. They had to sell by today or else they actually get that oil showing up on their doorstep. And if you bought that futures contract as an investment — you were always planning to sell it to someone else — you don't really want the oil yourself, so you have to find someone who does want the oil to buy it from you. Normally, not a problem. Lots of people want oil. But during this pandemic, it suddenly has become an issue.
因此，持有石油合同要在未来进行交付的投资者，在这种情况下，他们的最后期限为五月。他们必须在今天结束前卖掉石油，否则石油就会出现在他们的家门口。如果你买了这种期货合约作为投资，你总是在计划将其卖给别人，你自已其实并不需要石油，那你必须找到真正想要石油的人，从你手里买走这份合约。一般来说，这不是问题。许多人想要石油。但在疫情期间，这突然就成为了问题。
I talked to Bob Iaccino. He's a co-founder of Path Trading Partners. And I asked him what the market looked like yesterday. He said this.
我采访了鲍勃·艾奇诺。他是Path Trading Partners公司的联合创始人。我问他昨天市场情况如何。下面是他的回答。
BOB IACCINO: If somebody were to say to a refiner here, just take my oil free, then they would say, well, where am I going to put it? That space doesn't exist.
鲍勃·艾奇诺：如果有人对这里的炼油厂说，免费把我的石油拿走吧，那他们会说，我要把它放在哪里？这种地方不存在。
DOMONOSKE: The tanks are already full because of the coronavirus pandemic. Everyone is driving less. Planes are flying less. They have fewer people. There's less oil being used by manufacturing. Across the board, our consumption of oil is down. But oil is still getting pumped out of the ground. So it's building up in these huge stockpiles that mean there's not as much space available to store crude as people are looking for. So if you don't have buyers at zero dollars, you have to go even lower.
多莫诺斯克：由于冠状病毒疫情，油箱基本都满了。疫情期间，开车少。航班也少。乘客也在减少。制造业的用油量也减少了。可以说，我们的石油消耗量全面下降。但石油开采仍在持续。因此，库存越积越多，这意味着原油的储存空间并没有人们期待的那样大。因此，如果你找不到零美元买家，那价格就还得再降。
KING: Why would producers still be taking it out of the ground if they know it's basically not worth anything and it's just going to sit there?
金：如果生产商知道那一文不值，只能放在那里，为什么还要开采呢？
DOMONOSKE: Well, it costs money for a producer to shut a well down. And once you've shut a well down, sometimes it can be hard to get it back up. So companies don't want to do it right away, even if they're going to be taking a loss or maybe even paying money for a little while. Eventually, these low prices will push everyone to cut production. Internationally, the OPEC Plus group, OPEC and its allies, they've reached a deal to cut production. It's an about-face from recent events, where they were doing the opposite. But all these changes just aren't going to happen fast enough to bring the market back to what it used to look like.
多莫诺斯克：因为生产商关闭油井要花钱。油井关闭后，有时很难重开。因此，企业不希望立即关闭油井，即使他们会蒙受损失，甚至可能一段时间内还要花钱。最终，低价会迫使所有人减产。从国际上来说，欧佩克+组织（即欧佩克组织及其盟友）已经达成减产协议。他们改变了此前的计划，采取了完全相反的做法。但所有这些变化的速度并不足以让市场回到原来的状态。
And I should note here that these negative prices — other crude prices aren't negative like West Texas', but they are down across the board. Oil prices are low, and they're dropping lower.
我应该指出的是，这些负油价——其他原油价格并未像西得克萨斯一样出现负价格，但油价全面下跌。目前油价处于低位，而且还在继续走低。
KING: Well, could the federal government intervene and stabilize9 the market in some way?
金：联邦政府会以某种方式进行干预和稳定市场吗？
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, maybe. So last night, President Trump10 mentioned a few different possible actions. Some of these have come up before. He talked previously11 about filling up the Strategic Petroleum12 Reserve, which means buying oil to put it in storage that didn't get funded last time. They could lease out space — block Saudi shipments of oil, which once would have been unheard of. Some really unprecedented policy changes are being discussed. But I should note the oil industry is divided on what interventions13 they would want from the government.
多莫诺斯克：也许会。昨晚，特朗普总统提到了几个可能的措施。部分措施以前也提到过。他此前谈到过填满战略石油储存，即购买石油，将其存入上次未获得资金的库存中。他们可能会出租空间，阻止沙特油轮，这曾经是闻所未闻的。一些史无前例的政策变化正在讨论中。但我应该指出的是，就希望政府采取何种干预措施来说，石油行业存在分歧。
KING: OK. NPR's Camila Domonoske. Thanks so much.
金：好。以上是NPR新闻的卡米拉·多莫诺斯克带来的报道。谢谢你。
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, thank you.
多莫诺斯克：谢谢。
收听单词发音 |
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byline
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| n.署名；v.署名 | |
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synonyms
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| 同义词( synonym的名词复数 ) | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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hijacked
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| 劫持( hijack的过去式和过去分词 )； 绑架； 拦路抢劫； 操纵（会议等，以推销自己的意图） | |
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futures
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| n.期货，期货交易 | |
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investors
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| n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 ) | |
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stabilize
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| vt.（使）稳定，使稳固，使稳定平衡；vi.稳定 | |
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trump
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| n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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petroleum
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| n.原油，石油 | |
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interventions
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| n.介入，干涉，干预( intervention的名词复数 ) | |
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