futures

As the global crude oil market continuously evolves, so do the tools that traders, refiners and producers rely on to navigate its complexities. Among these tools, futures contracts play a pivotal role, allowing market participants to manage risk and ensure liquidity. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore what sets apart two major futures contracts for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, focusing on the differences in location, connectivity and quality — and how those distinctions define their roles in the market. 

The U.S. crude oil market has undergone a drastic shift since the Shale Revolution. After a quarter-century of declining production and increasing dependence on imported oil, the U.S. has become the world’s leading producer. This transformation turned the U.S. into a major exporter and a critical supplier to the international market and also led to an evolution in crude oil trading. In today’s RBN blog, the first in a series, we’ll explore the history of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures contracts. 

A lot of people know that Permian natural gas prices have spent many days in negative territory over the last few years, only to skyrocket over $100/MMBtu during the Deep Freeze in February. Those events were mostly viewed as transitory, driven by a chronic lack of pipeline capacity in the former case and a crazy round of arctic weather in the latter. It may come as a surprise to hear that forward basis prices for natural gas in the Permian are trading at a premium to Henry Hub for at least some months over the next year or so. How could it be that gas from a supply basin way out in West Texas, where gas is considered a byproduct, trades at a premium? The answer lies in the key infrastructure changes expected in the weeks ahead and a premium in forward basis for the Houston Ship Channel gas market. How long the Texas premiums will last depends on Permian gas production, which is starting to take off again. Today, we aim to explain the latest developments in Permian and Texas natural gas markets.

With the rise of LNG feedgas demand in southern Louisiana, physical natural gas flows at Henry Hub have been climbing. As such, volumes moving through the U.S. benchmark pricing location are increasingly affected by swings in LNG feedgas deliveries, as well as in the gas supply flows into southern Louisiana that serve that demand. Those impacts have become particularly evident in recent months as nearby LNG export capacity utilization went from a trough this summer due to cargo cancellations, to being erratic during late summer and fall as hurricanes disrupted marine traffic and facility operations, and, in more recent days, to being at full bore at most facilities. In conjunction with brimming storage and pipeline maintenance in the area, this has meant more operational constraints and volatility in flows and pricing at the hub. Today, we continue our series on the changing dynamics in and around Henry Hub. 

Since August, physical natural gas flows at Henry Hub have been at all-time highs for each respective month, and, in early October, they recorded the highest single-day flows that we’ve seen since December 2009. For decades, liquidity at the U.S. natural gas benchmark pricing location in southeastern Louisiana has been dominated by financial trades, with minimal physical exchange of gas, despite the hub boasting robust physical infrastructure and ample pipeline connectivity. That’s still the case, but physical movements of gas in the area have been on the rise due to LNG exports ramping up from the Sabine Pass and Cameron LNG facilities in southwestern Louisiana and a slew of Appalachia gas supply pipelines targeting that export demand. As more physical gas is moving through the hub, operational constraints are developing at key interconnects there. That, along with the ups and downs of LNG feedgas demand, is contributing to spot price volatility at the hub and, at times, a deeper divergence between Henry spot and futures prices. Today, we begin a short blog series on the changing gas flow dynamics in and around Henry. 

Lower crude oil prices whack oil-directed drilling, slashing crude production, which cuts associated gas output, tightening the gas supply-demand balance, and boosting gas prices enough to spur more gas-directed drilling — it’s a classic case of commodity market schadenfreude, where one product benefits at the expense of another. That’s the way it was supposed to work, according to various trading strategies touted a few weeks back. But here we sit, with crude oil prices still around $40/bbl and gas prices languishing at a paltry $1.66/MMBtu. Was there something wrong with the schadenfreude thesis, or do we have to look deeper to understand how prices will behave in this convoluted COVID era? In today’s blog, we’ll explore this question and what it may mean for natural gas prices in the coming months.

Brent is by far the most important crude oil benchmark in the world, with well over 70% of all global crudes tied either directly or indirectly to the North Sea crude’s price. But the original Brent crude oil production is almost played out, with all of the offshore Brent producing platforms soon to be decommissioned. This might seem to be a big problem, but in the world of crude oil trading, it is a total non-issue, because Brent is no longer simply a grade of crude oil. It is a multi-layered matrix of trading instruments, pricing benchmarks, and standard contracts linked together by price differentials traded across a number of mechanisms and platforms that form the foundation of a robust, vibrant, and extremely important marketplace. Today, we delve further into the mechanics of the Brent complex, the key components that make it work, and the transactional glue that binds them together.

Do not try and refine the Brent; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no Brent. Then you will see it is not the Brent that gets refined; it is only yourself. For those who are not fans of The Matrix, that sentence may seem a little cryptic, but it makes a point that is little understood outside the rarified world of crude oil trading. The production of North Sea Brent crude oil is down to less than a couple of hundred barrels per day. Soon it will be gone altogether. But 70% of all crude oil in the world is tied either directly or indirectly to the price of Brent. How is that possible? Well, it’s because Brent is no longer simply a grade of crude oil. Over the past two decades, it has evolved into an intricate, multi-layered matrix of trading instruments, pricing benchmarks and standard contracts that is a world unto itself. A world with a huge impact across almost everything in today’s energy markets. Unfortunately, no one can be told what Brent is. You have to see it for yourself. So that’s where we’ll go in this blog series. Warning: To read on is like taking the red pill.

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.

On Monday, front-month WTI at Cushing cratered to a negative $37.63/bbl. On Tuesday, the same futures price rose by nearly $48 to close at about $10/bbl — a positive $10, that is. As for WTI to be delivered in June, it lost well over a third of its value on Tuesday, ending up at less than $12/bbl, but over the past two days it has roared back to over $16/bbl. No doubt the WTI futures market will see more wild times in the days and weeks ahead as traders look to avoid the traps that ensnared the market as the May contract approached expiry. If there’s a lesson to be learned from the past week, it’s that it really helps to understand the ins and outs of the futures market — especially when it is so volatile. Perhaps the most important thing to wrap your head around is that while the futures market mostly involves financial players who will never take physical delivery of oil, the two markets — financial and physical — are fundamentally linked. Prompt-month futures converge on spot prices over time, while physical contracts are settled in part based on NYMEX futures, so producers will feel the sting of Monday’s negative prices when physical April deliveries are invoiced. Today, we begin a two-part blog series examining U.S. spot crude pricing mechanisms.