Crude Oil & Natural Gas Pricing: June’s average West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price per barrel decreased 2% month on month (m/m). The WTI is down 39% year on year (y/y), coming in at $70.25 / barrel in June 2023 vs. $114.84 / barrel in June 2022.

By comparison, Brent crude decreased 1% m/m to $74.84 / barrel in June 2023, and experienced shrinking of -39% y/y ($122.71 / barrel in June 2022). The WTI and Brent crude oil benchmarks are undergoing similar patterns this month. Additionally in June, the Brent-WTI spread increased to $4.59.

In addition, we saw the Henry Hub Natural Gas spot price increase 1% m/m to $2.18 / million Btu. This represents a 72% 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 present. “Diesel is produced from crude oil, so crude oil prices are closely linked to diesel prices. In 2023, diesel prices have declined in both Europe and the United States because Europe has been able to replace most of the diesel it would have imported from Russia with imports from other regions.” (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.