Crude Oil & Natural Gas Pricing: May’s average West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price per barrel decreased 6% month on month (m/m). The WTI is up 12% year on year (y/y), coming in at $80.12 / barrel in May 2024 vs. $71.58 / barrel in May 2023.

By comparison, Brent crude decreased 9% m/m to $81.75 / barrel in May 2024, and experienced growth of 8% y/y ($75.47 / barrel in May 2023). The WTI and Brent crude oil benchmarks are undergoing similar patterns this month. Additionally in May, the Brent-WTI spread decreased to $1.63.

In addition, we saw the Henry Hub Natural Gas spot price increase 33% m/m to $2.12 / million Btu. This represents a 1% 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. “The United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row. The crude oil production record in the United States in 2023 is unlikely to be broken in any other country in the near term because no other country has reached production capacity of 13.0 million b/d. Together, the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia accounted for 40% of global oil production in 2023 These three countries have produced more oil than any others since 1971.” (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.