Many of us started daydreaming when we read that the prices of crude oil worldwide in May 2020 had plunged to zero because sales crashed in the Covid-19 pandemic. We slept happily, imagining that petrol and diesel prices would come down sharply. Instead, we woke up to a nightmare — fuel prices rose sharply as soon as roads were opened. Let us look into the hows and whens of this rude jolt, try and understand the underlying causes and figure out what the future has in store.