Since July 26, the quotation of West Texas Intermediate, the reference crude for North America, has not exceeded 100 dollars a barrel. It happened today at Nymex, where the WTI has also recently crossed the threshold of 102 dollars, reducing the gap with Brent: in London, the European benchmark has remained below 113 dollars in the last few hours, while in recent weeks the premium for Brent had repeatedly exceeded $20.
The recovery of US crude oil is due to the drop in commercial inventories reported last evening by the API, the American Petroleum Institute, but it is also due to the intention to unblock the age-old problem of the node constituted by the Cushing, Oklahoma oil hub , the only warehouse authorized to deliver crude oil for Nymex.
One of the measures identified should make it possible to sort towards the refineries of the Gulf of Mexico the oil that has hitherto taken the opposite direction, the one that leads from the gulf wells towards the continental terminals.
