CMA Roll Adjust

On April 20, that fateful day in crude oil markets when the CME May contract for WTI at Cushing collapsed to negative $37.63/bbl, the number of contracts involved in the chaos was relatively small. So you might think that most producers sat on the sidelines, watching Wall Street paper traders writhe in stunning financial pain. But not so. Almost all producers saw their crude prices that day crashing in exactly the same magnitude. That’s because the daily price of the CME WTI contract is part of the formula pricing used in a very large portion of crude oil contracts in U.S. markets, both directly and indirectly. There are two formula mechanisms that are commonly used in crude oil sale/purchase contracts that are responsible for that linkage: the CMA and WTI P-Plus. These arcane pricing mechanisms are complicated, but in order to understand U.S. crude markets, it is critically important to appreciate how they work. Today, we continue our deep dive into crude oil contract pricing mechanisms.

The CME NYMEX WTI crude futures contract is the underlying benchmark in nearly all US domestic crude price contracts. Differences between futures and physical trading arrangements make pricing physical WTI barrels complex. Two formula mechanisms are commonly used in physical transactions that link directly to the NYMEX settlement prices – the CMA average and WTI P-Plus. Today we conclude a two-part look at WTI spot crude pricing.