Friday, May 09, 2008

What About That Oil Futures Price Gadget Over There

Anyone who is bombarded by business reports on the news can sort of figure out the price of oil and gas. But it's still confusing and I don't know if the following explanation makes it any clearer, but it should help you read the chart.

What is ICE? - IntercontinentalExchange® (NYSE: ICE) operates global commodity and financial products marketplaces, including the world’s leading electronic energy markets and soft commodity exchange.

WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil is of very high quality and is excellent for refining a larger portion of gasoline. (wikipedia).
The unit price listed is in US Dollars per barrel.

Gas Oil Is the volume of total trades of the gas and oil commodities. (ICE)

RBOB (Reformulated Gasoline Blendstock for Oxygen Blending) Futures is the new name for unleaded gas futures. The price listed is in cents so 300 is really $3 (duh). According to About.com you can add about 65 cents to the price to estimate the cost of gasoline for the next week.

Brent Crude - Oil from the North Sea. Brent blend is a light crude oil, though not as light as WTI. The unit price is in US Dollars.(wikipedia)

Heating oil accounts for about 25% of the yield of a barrel of crude oil, the second largest "cut" after gasoline.
(wikipedia)

UK Natural Gas - Measured in GBX Pence Sterling per Therm (100K BTU's). Fifty Pence equals about One US Dollar. (ICE and coinmill.com)

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gasoil is a product or Crude & is not related to total contract volumes