U.S. Crude Oil Pricing: April’s average West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price per barrel fell 1% month on month (m/m) – its first decline since the start of 2021. However, the WTI is still up 273% year on year (y/y), coming in at $61.72 / barrel in April 2021 vs. $16.55 / barrel in April 2020.

By comparison, Brent crude fell 1% m/m to $64.81/barrel in April, while still experiencing growth of +253% y/y ($18.38/barrel in April 2020). The WTI and Brent crude oil benchmarks are undergoing similar patterns this month.

Figure 1 charts the prices of WTI and Brent crude oil from 2000 to present. Until the U.S. shale revolution of the 2010’s, the WTI oil benchmark was higher than that of Brent’s. But increased production and supply following the implementation of fracking has driven the price/barrel of the WTI benchmark lower than Brent.

At Gerdau, we routinely monitor the price of crude 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.