FX.co ★ WTI Crude Exceeds Brent for First Time in Three Years

On July 22, during the trading session, WTI advanced in price to $108.52 per barrel, and European Brent dipped as low as $108.2 p/b. Thus, American oil has crucially gone up in price compared to European one for the first time since Fall 2010.
Brent and WTI equaled in the price on Friday, July 19. As Bloomberg reported, in the course of the trading session, WTI was coming out 3 cents higher than Brent; however only on July 22, the difference between them reached few dozens of cents.
Investors are buying up WTI oil following the decline of the oil inventories in the US. Bloomberg relates this to launching the oil pipeline within the US area that enabled to boost supplies for oil refineries. Traders expect the oil demand to rise in the short term including the inventory replenishment.
In the 2000s, WTI was trading a bit more expensive than Brent; then it fell in price abruptly amid the global economic recession, oil exploitation boom inland and, as a result, fuel stock growth. Brent also was under pressure of the low demand; however European oil was not able to lose its value too much due to the reserve depletion in the North Sea, the major source of Brent. Eventually, the difference between the two brands had been about $25 by Fall 2010 (WTI was worth $86, Brent was worth over $110).
WTI and Brent are the essential oil brands on a global scale; they are the reference standard for other, less popular mixtures. So, prices of the Urals brand are attached to Brent, while oil from numerous Middle-East countries – to WTI.