Contango! Great word. For a fun explanation, check out Planet Money’s “Negative Oil”, https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/842095406/episode-993-negativ... .
Sure you could have received money by buying the (undeliverable) oil on a tanker, but then you would have been stuck paying the oil tanker lease cost (tens of thousands of USD/day) until capacity to take delivery became available, or until the tanker could be moved elsewhere with capacity.
i would've get a receipt in my name (for whatever brief period that would've been) and i would get to boast about that..... just harmless fun thing