Thursday, December 24, 2015

Brent- WTI parity (again) before the year-end!

Before the year is out, we’ve got parity yet again between both benchmarks. Right at the start of the year, the West Texas Intermediate briefly traded at a premium to Brent having achieved parity at $48.05 per barrel on January 15


Come the end of the year and we are here again! Parity between both benchmarks was achieved once more at a lower level of $36.40 per barrel on December 22 (see above, click to enlarge), exactly $11.65 lower with WTI in the ascendancy. In fact, the US marker's premium appears to holding.

The OPEC stalemate, peak winter demand and lifting of US exports ban are and will remain price positives for the WTI, as one wrote in a Forbes column. So is this a reversal of the 'crude' pecking order of futures contracts we have gotten used to since 2010? The Oilholic feels its early days yet. However, the development sure makes for an interesting 12 months in more ways than one.

Happy Christmas dear readers, but that’s all for the moment folks! Keep reading, keep it ‘crude’!

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© Gaurav Sharma 2015. Photo: Bloomberg terminal screen grab showing moment of Brent-WTI parity on December 22, 2015  © Bloomberg.

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