• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 30 mins GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 26 mins How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 2 hours If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 3 days Oil Stocks, Market Direction, Bitcoin, Minerals, Gold, Silver - Technical Trading <--- Chris Vermeulen & Gareth Soloway weigh in
  • 5 days The European Union is exceptional in its political divide. Examples are apparent in Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belarus, Ireland, etc.
  • 15 hours Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs
  • 4 days "What’s In Store For Europe In 2023?" By the CIA (aka RFE/RL as a ruse to deceive readers)
Tsvetana Paraskova

Tsvetana Paraskova

Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

More Info

Premium Content

Rising Demand Closes The Gap Between WTI And Brent Prices

Rising oil demand in the United States and flat domestic production in recent months have boosted the price of the U.S. oil benchmark WTI Crude, which has significantly narrowed the discount to Brent Crude in recent weeks.

According to GasBuddy data, weekly U.S. gasoline demand for the week to June 13 rose for the fourth consecutive week to a new pandemic high, and was up by 0.8 percent from the prior week.

U.S. gasoline and distillates production is also rising, with gasoline production averaging 9.9 million barrels per day (bpd) in the week to June 11, compared with 9.4 million bpd a week earlier, the EIA said in this week’s inventory report. Production of middle distillates averaged 5.1 million bpd last week, compared with 4.9 million bpd a week earlier.

Refinery utilization rates jumped to 92.6 percent in the week to June 11, the highest since the start of the pandemic. This was higher than the four-week average of 89.9 percent. Refiners in the Midwest used capacity at 97.3 percent last week.

The recent strength in oil prices has been led by the U.S. benchmark, with the WTI discount to Brent quickly closing in on US$2 a barrel, compared to more than US$4 per barrel back in April, ING strategists Warren Patterson and Wenyu Yao said this week.

“Refinery runs in the US have picked up considerably, back to levels last seen in January 2020, while crude oil output continues to hover around the 11MMbbls/d mark,” they added.

WTI prices could even catch up with the price of Brent, although this is not the base-case scenario for RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Tran, who told Bloomberg: “It’s a function of U.S. demand accelerating out of the gate.”

The narrowing of the spread, however, will likely result in lower U.S. crude oil exports going forward.

“The narrowing in the WTI/Brent spread suggests that we should see US crude oil exports trending lower,” ING said.

Early on Friday, WTI Crude was trading at $70.67 and Brent Crude at $72.57, down by around 0.5 percent, with the prompt spread at less than $2 a barrel.  

ADVERTISEMENT

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Olprice.com:


Download The Free Oilprice App Today

Back to homepage





Leave a comment
  • Manoj on June 19 2021 said:
    Is Oil price will hold up for some time!

Leave a comment




EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News