The price differential for physical crude oil that is delivered from the heart of the Permian into Midland, TX, known as WTI Midland, has recently been trading at some of its lowest levels in more than two years. As discussed in RBN’s TradeView report, WTI Midland has been on a downward slide since March 2025 (blue arrow in chart below), recently hitting a low on June 25 of $(0.29)/bbl (red circle) under the price of NYMEX-CME Domestic Sweet (DSW) — the commonly quoted prompt month futures contract price of crude oil — and its lowest value since December 12, 2022 when it reached a discount of $(0.30)/bbl (black circle).
Featured Articles
- Analyst Insight
Fall Friskiness – WTI Midland Crude Price Differentials Stage a Rebound
Midland crude price differentials, the real WTI price, rose to a six-month high at the end of August.
- Blog
Swap It Out - Decoding Corpus Christi and MEH Export Hub Crude Price Differentials
Crude oil exports hit 5.6 MMb/d last week, the second-highest level in EIA stats ever. Exports in the first six months of the year have averaged 4.1 MMb/d, 28% — or nearly 1 MMb/d — higher than the same period in 2022. And with Midland WTI crude now deliverable into global benchmark Brent, even more exports are on the way. Which makes it ever more important to understand how physical spot crude oil is priced at Gulf Coast export terminals. After all, exporters only move crude off the dock when they can make money doing so — well, at least most of the time. And that depends on what it costs to get a given crude grade to the dock, what it’s worth when it gets there, the cost of shipping to overseas destinations, and the price realized when the cargo lands there. To shed more light on those export economics, in today’s RBN blog, we continue our exploration of crude oil pricing in the markets for physical U.S. and Canadian crudes.
- Blog
The Price is Right - North America Crude Oil Price Differentials Explain and Foretell Market Shifts
There is no debate about it: The CME/NYMEX domestic sweet (DSW) crude oil futures prompt-month contract at Cushing, OK, is the most closely followed benchmark in U.S. energy markets. It’s the price quoted in nightly news reports and general media publications. And now, with U.S. exports of WTI deliverable on the Brent contract, domestic sweet at Cushing is arguably setting the price for crudes around the world. But the fact is, most crudes traded in physical markets across North America are not priced at the DSW-at-Cushing benchmark but instead at a differential to Cushing — higher or lower on any given day based on each crude’s unique quality, location, and supply/demand characteristics. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss how the behavior of differentials from the Cushing benchmark can go a long way to explain what is happening with crude oil production, transportation volumes, storage and, of course, exports.
