Saudi and Russia both, really. The first escalated and the latter walked away, which is what caused the crash last week.

But really, it doesn't matter. What was happening at Saudi pumps last week was a speculative event, the size of the petroleum market for the next few months has absolutely nothing to do with OPEC decisions, it's about quarantine restrictions on travel all over the world.

Saudi might continue pumping, but as others are pointing out when the tankers and storage facilities fill up, they'll stop. Because there's nothing else to do.

Electricity can go negative because some modes of production are slow and difficult to turn off, so they keep producing and we need somewhere to dump the energy.

It doesn't help that unlike oil electricity is produced in a just in time fashion, we produce it the same second we want to use it, not days or months before hand. I.e. there is nearly no buffer capacity in the supply chain.

Does the same apply to oil? Can we not just turn the pumps off and leave it in the ground with what basically amounts to flipping a switch?

In America, wind power is given a subsidy of up to 1.9 cents per kWh generated. Because wind has almost zero variable costs, negative electricity prices can still make money for wind producers. Even though wind energy is fast to turn off.

yes you can stop taking it out of the ground. except Russia and Saudi could not agree with one another to do that, so now we have a reduction in demand coupled with no reduction in supply. soon storing that oil will start to be a cost centre. then we will see less demand at the wholesale level combined with price cuts to move existing stock. all of which will ultimately hurt oil producing countries.

They will stop pumping when the price to extract gets too low. To stop pumping does not reduce the amount of oil you will get out of a reservoir to any significant degree and you can start up again with little cost.

The big issue is that if lots of oil companies go bankrupt (many US fracking ones are highly leveraged and must sell oil at a certain price in order to survive) and people get other types of jobs, you can't ramp up the creation of new wells very easily. Oil from fracking takes a lot more effort and wells than the old style wells.

We could easily turn the pumps off. The issue is the Saudis aren’t doing that, for geopolitical reasons.

> We could easily turn the pumps off

Can one? I don't know enough about oil wells to know if that's a simple thing to do. It could very well do permanent damage to the well, in excess of selling negatively for a few months.

Only Russia can't completely turn off its pumps, and only during winter. They'll freeze. Besides that case everyone else can do it or simply slow them down as they've done in the past.

Will they thaw up and be usable in summer, or does the freezing destroy them?

Not destroy exactly, but cause enough damage that it will require extensive repairs. Please note that this what the Russians claimed some years ago as the reason they could not shut down production during a previous disagreement with OPEC so we should take it with a grain of salt.

Saudi Arabia is constantly turning on and off different oil wells to manipulate the price of oil. This current crash is in large part due to them turning on all of their pumps.

Usually, one can, with no ill-effects. Many operators run their marginally economic wells for only a few hours per day already.