Crude Oil & Natural Gas Pricing: October’s average West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price per barrel increased 2% month on month (m/m). The WTI is down 16% year on year (y/y), coming in at $71.99 / barrel in October 2024 vs. $85.84 / barrel in October 2023.

By comparison, Brent crude also increased 2% m/m to $75.63 / barrel in October 2024, and experienced a decline of 17% y/y ($90.78 / barrel in October 2023). The WTI and Brent crude oil benchmarks are undergoing similar patterns this month. Additionally in October, the Brent-WTI spread decreased to $3.64.

In addition, we saw the Henry Hub Natural Gas spot price decrease 4% m/m to $2.20 / million Btu. This represents a 26% decrease y/y.

Figure 1 charts the monthly average spot prices of WTI and Brent crude oil, plus the Henry Hub natural gas spot price from 2000 to the present. “Relatively large production cuts by OPEC+ have supported crude oil prices and spurred production among non-OPEC+ sources, including U.S. producers. Increased production would normally result in more cash from operations, but substantially lower natural gas prices likely hampered revenue for these companies.” (eia.gov).

At Gerdau, we routinely monitor the price of oil issued by the Energy Information Administration since it has a direct impact on the cost of shipping and freight. These costs, in addition to the data we follow on oil and gas rotary rig counts, have been shown to impact long product sales.