WTI Crude

The most quoted oil price in the world is delivered into steel tanks in an Oklahoma town of fewer than eight thousand residents, roughly five hundred miles from the nearest saltwater port. Cushing has been the delivery point for the NYMEX light sweet crude contract for over three decades. A benchmark for a seaborne commodity settling inland is not a historical curiosity; it is the mechanism that generates almost everything interesting about how WTI trades, including the spread against Brent that most crude hedges are built around.