Oil & Gas Terms

Backwardation is a market condition in which the futures price of a commodity is lower than its current spot price, so contracts for nearer delivery cost more than those for later delivery.

A barrel, abbreviated bbl, is the standard unit of volume for crude oil and equals 42 US gallons, or about 159 litres.

Brent crude is a major benchmark for pricing crude oil in global energy markets.

Contango is a market condition in which the futures price of a commodity is higher than its current spot price, so contracts for later delivery cost more than those for delivery soon.

Crude oil is unrefined petroleum extracted from underground reservoirs and refined into products such as petrol, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, and petrochemicals.

Crude oil inventories are the volumes of crude held in storage at a given time, reported as the number of barrels sitting in tanks, terminals, and other facilities.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel made up mainly of methane that is burned for heating, electricity generation, and industrial use, and it trades as a separate energy commodity from crude oil.

OPEC is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, an intergovernmental group of oil-producing nations that coordinates petroleum policy and discusses crude oil market conditions.

OPEC+ is a wider alliance of oil-producing countries that brings together the members of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, with allied producers such as Russia to coordinate crude output.

WTI, or West Texas Intermediate, is the main US benchmark for crude oil, known as a light and sweet grade because it has low density and low sulphur content.

The WTI-Brent spread is the price difference between West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the US crude benchmark, and Brent, the international benchmark.

WTIUSD is the market symbol for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil priced in US dollars per barrel.

XBRUSD is the market symbol for Brent crude oil priced in US dollars per barrel.