Benchmark (crude Oil) - West Texas Intermediate (WTI)

West Texas Intermediate (WTI)

West Texas Intermediate is used primarily in the U.S. It is light (API gravity) and sweet (low-sulfur) thus making it ideal for producing products like low-sulfur gasoline and low-sulfur diesel. Brent is not as light or as sweet as WTI but it is still a high-grade crude. The OPEC basket is slightly heavier and more sour than Brent. As a result of these gravity and sulfur differences, WTI typically trades at a dollar or two premium to Brent and another dollar or two premium to the OPEC basket.

In 2011 and 2012, WTI has been trading at a significant discount to Brent.

Read more about this topic:  Benchmark (crude Oil)

Famous quotes containing the words west, texas and/or intermediate:

    These emblems of twilight have seen at length,
    And the man red-faced and tall seen, leaning
    In the day of his strength
    Not as a pine, but the stiff form
    Against the west pillar....
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.
    —For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Complete courage and absolute cowardice are extremes that very few men fall into. The vast middle space contains all the intermediate kinds and degrees of courage; and these differ as much from one another as men’s faces or their humors do.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)