Crude Oil & Natural Gas Pricing

Crude Oil & Natural Gas Pricing: April’s average West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price per barrel decreased 6% month on month (m/m) – reversing trend after increasing for three months. The WTI is up 65% year on year (y/y), coming in at $101.78 / barrel in April 2022 vs. $61.72 / barrel in April 2021.

By comparison, Brent crude also decreased 11% m/m to $104.58 / barrel in April 2022, and experienced growth of +61% y/y ($64.81 / barrel in April 2021). The WTI and Brent crude oil benchmarks are undergoing very similar patterns this month. Additionally in April, the Brent-WTI spread decreased to $2.80, the smallest this year.

In addition, we saw the Henry Hub Natural Gas spot price increase 35% m/m to $6.60 / million Btu. This represents a 148% increase y/y.

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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 present. “We expect higher fuel prices this summer as a result of higher crude oil prices. Crude oil prices have generally risen since the start of the year partly as a result of geopolitical developments, particularly Russia’s war against Ukraine” (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.

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