As energy investors bet on the direction of原油价格following the recent plunge of more than 50 percent, the question of which benchmark to use is more relevant than ever.
近几个月，布伦特，全球石油基准和西德克萨斯中间人德克萨斯中间人的价格之间的差异剧烈地波动，改变了世界各地的石油流动。WTI于4月14日的价格为53.11美元，比布伦特58.46美元超过5美元。1月份折扣是从零的零点，但在2月底，最近的最近高峰超过12美元。
Notwithstanding the volatility, the discount on WTI has widened recently relative to the historical pattern because of the boom in U.S. shale oil production, which has overwhelmed local storage capacity and outpaced the building of new pipelines. U.S. crude oil inventories are at their highest level for this time of year in at least 80 years, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a government agency, said on April 8. The WTI discount has also been driven by the country’s four-decades-old ban on crude exports, analysts and investors say. The spread is likely to narrow next year as U.S. drilling activity slows in response to weaker prices, according to analysts and EIA projections.
基准的动态了more than a passing interest for commodities investors. “The Brent-WTI spread for a long time was risk-on, risk-off,” says Phil Flynn, an oil markets analyst at the Price Futures Group in Chicago. “When it seemed there was risk in the Middle East, people would buy Brent crude and sell WTI. When there was concern of disruption overseas, the hedge would be to be long Brent versus WTI because the U.S. has plenty of oil on the glide.” The prospect of a sustained discount on WTI “could really rewrite where the spread is going to go in the long term,” Flynn adds. “A lot of investors have been playing this spread as a hedge against oil but also against their entire portfolio.”
The big differential between the benchmarks is also driving significant changes in global oil trade. Most notably, Latin American countries like墨西哥将其油价与WTI联系起来，利用价格差距，将其批量出口到今年亚洲。
“Traditionally, Asian markets prefer Middle Eastern crude because it’s cheaper for them to bring it in because it’s closer,” says Mara Roberts, a New York–based oil and gas analyst at BMI Research, a unit of Fitch Group. “The WTI benchmark was at enough of a discount for Chinese refineries to want to bring in Latin American crudes.”
According to the EIA, Mexico’s state-run oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, cut its official crude price for Asian buyers to $7.85 below that for Dubai/Oman crude, a Middle East benchmark that closely mirrors Brent, in February, and to $7.05 below in March. The agency described those price cuts as “two of the largest discounts since at least 1995.” South Korea’s GS Caltex Corp., a major oil refiner, bought 1 million barrels of crude oil from Pemex for March delivery, its first purchase of Mexican crude in more than two decades, the EIA said. Pemex is also due to ship 5 million barrels of oil to South Korea through April, it added.
Latin American crude exportsto Asia rose to 1.55 million barrels a day on average last year and to 1.97 million bpd on average so far this year, compared with 1.22 million bpd in 2013, according to shipping-data provider ClipperData. Mexico has not only gained a new client in South Korea but has also intensified its oil trade with India, exporting an average of 128,000 bpd to the South Asian country so far this year, up from 75,000 bpd in 2013 and 2014, the firm says.
哥伦比亚还将出口增长到亚洲，同时减少了对美国的出货量，哥伦比亚将115,000亿桶石油出口到亚洲，298,000名BPD到美国，去年将224,000名BPD出口到美国，Clipperdata将224,000人BPD出口到亚洲和223,000名BPD。
“The fact that you have a lot of domestic production in the U.S. pushes out imports. So those imports have to go somewhere,” said Abudi Zein, ClipperData’s chief operating officer.
The U.S.’s oil imports accounted for 27 percent of the country’s consumed oil in 2014, according to the EIA, the lowest share since the mid-1980s.
然而，亚洲对拉丁美洲原油的需求可能会使WTI折扣变窄。今年WTI的EIA项目将平均为7美元，2016年减少5美元，作为美国钻油活动遏制生产的下降。据石油服务公司Baker Hughes称，美国石油钻井平台汇率跌至760年至4月10日，这是自2010年12月以来的最低水平。
Some investors say the WTI discount to Brent would disappear if the U.S. cancels its ban on exports, a policy adopted in the 1970s after an embargo by Middle East countries created fuel shortages in the U.S. Eliminating the ban would allow U.S. producers to sell their oil abroad at higher prices.
“The spread is completely artificial,” says William O’Grady, chief market strategist at St. Louis–based Confluence Investment Management. “If U.S. crude could be exported, that spread would narrow rapidly, probably mostly from Brent falling rather than WTI going up. What’s the likelihood that the rules will be changed? Not very high.” O’Grady adds that any proposed change would face vehement opposition from U.S. refiners, which have profited by refining cheaper domestic oil and then selling refined products at prices tied to Brent prices on the world market.
WTI传统上与布伦特密切追踪，但自2011年以来开始以显着的折扣交易，因为美国的生产增加和管道限制限制了从Cushing，俄克拉荷马州的炼油厂将原油运送到该国的存储中心。
Although Brent remains the leading global benchmark, some experts are questioning its future relevance. Brent takes its name from the North Sea’s Brent field. It is used to price two thirds of the world’s internationally traded crude oil supplies. But the field has been severely depleted, and in February荷兰皇家贝壳said it would decommission the Brent field over the next decade.
2月份表示，普罗瓦山财务单位迈克沃夫山财政部侧重于商品价格报告并计算出扁平的价格，这计划在五年内完成基准的大变化，以便从可能远离非洲和俄罗斯融合的武器。
“I don’t see the Brent benchmark going away,” says O’Grady. “It won’t be Brent anymore, but it’ll be Brent-like crudes from a lot of parts of the world that will be delivered in lieu of Brent.”
价格期货集团的Flynn表示WTI也将面临重大变化。原油主要来自德克萨斯州的二叠纪盆地的常规井，但今天的大产量增长来自于国家其他地区的液压压裂等先进技术，它产生一种称为冷凝物的超轻的原油。“让我们面对它，很多布伦特原油不仅仅是北海;这也是非洲原油，“他说。“而且WTI正在用凝结物冲洗，所以这两个目标都将变化。”