62 million barrels of worthless oil options become gold mine

Some 62 million barrels of October call options on West Texas Intermediate crude — that were set to expire worthless on Tuesday — were suddenly in the money after prices spiked on the open.

As of Friday, there were 61,577 outstanding calls with strike prices ranging from $55 to $60 a barrel, higher than the $54.85 a barrel settlement.

With October WTI futures jumping as much as $8.49 at the open late Sunday after a drone attack took more than 5 million barrels a day of Saudi Arabian oil production offline, call prices spiked.