Today’s Oil Prices: Live Brent & WTI Spot Rates

WTI Crude Oil Price Chart

Brent Crude Oil Price Chart

This guide explains what the oil spot price represents and what factors determine the constantly moving live price. We cover oil blends (Brent and WTI) and ways to speculate on crude oil spot prices without buying physical barrels.

What Is The Brent Crude Oil Spot Price?

A simple way to understand oil spot prices is by breaking down the meaning of a complex term like ‘Brent crude oil spot price’:

• Brent — the type of oil blend, as opposed to another oil blend like West Texas Intermediate (WTI)
• Crude oil — the physical asset being brought or sold, in this case, crude oil with minimal processing
• Spot price — the present price indicator at which an asset can be purchased or sold on the market

So, when you see a price tag named ‘Brent crude oil spot price’, it refers to the current market price of Brent blend crude oil. The spot price indicates the cost at which Brent crude oil can be brought or sold.

Oil prices are typically quoted per barrel and in dollars (USD) around the world and no matter if it’s American oil or not.

What Drives the Price of Oil?

Crude oil is extracted from underground oil reserves. In Brent crude oil’s instance, these reserves are under the seafloor, while WTI crude oil is extracted from reserves located under dry land. So the extraction process, machinery and capital required are different.

Aside from the physical groundwork of gathering and processing oil, market factors are the true price-determinants of crude oil spot prices. Crude oil market regulations control supply and dynamics, thus price, based on factors like:

• Politics: Oil availability and the necessary means to access that oil may result in political conflict between domestic and international jurisdictions.
• Social & Environmental: Increasing awareness of human behavior’s influence on the environment, resulting in stricter benchmarks to justify the use of long-life-cycle fossil fuels like crude oil. OPEC is highly influential in the crude oil space.
• Economical: Depending on the influence of powerful individuals behind oil supply chains, market regulations may be subject to seemingly unwarranted change, causing violent price swings.

The other main factors that affect oil prices include:

Supply and Demand

As with all commodities, oil prices are driven by supply and demand. However, the global pool of oil and the ease with which oil moves around the world levels some of these price pressures, and no one oil producer to completely dominate the world market.

New Resources

From time to time new oil resources come online — like Canadian oil sands or US crude oil from oil shale — these add to the global supply. New sources can exert a downward force on oil prices, even in times of heavy demand.

Extraction costs are typically higher for new resources, meaning these oils are only competitive in lower-supply, high-price environments.

Consumption Patterns

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted increasing global demand for crude oil, due to:

• An increasing world population
• Increased energy consumption in developing countries
• Growth in transportation, petrochemical, and aviation industries.

Even though Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries are reducing their road transportation oil consumption on a per-vehicle basis, the growing automobile fleet in developing countries far outpaces such reductions.

Global Events

Many unforeseen events can also impact the price of crude oil, driving it up or down. For example:

• After the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s, the price of oil rose sharply.
• The 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic saw crude oil plummet to a negative price per barrel.
• The Russia-Ukraine war has impacted oil prices dramatically since 2022. Russia is a major global oil producer (12% market share) and the EU’s main supplier of crude oil.

Technological developments and changes in resource distributions along the oil supply chain will also impact crude oil spot prices. The increased focus on renewable energy is already accelerating such changes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the standard unit of oil?

Oil prices are quoted per barrel, or ‘bbl’. The abbreviation indicates one barrel of crude oil, but you may see Gbbl (one billion barrels), as well as Mbbl (one million barrels) or Kbbl for one thousand barrels. For example, you can see that Brent crude oil spot prices are quoted by the barrel (bbl), as are West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices on global futures exchanges like NYMEX.

What is today’s Brent crude oil price?

Today’s live Brent crude oil spot price is shown at the top of this page, updated every 60 seconds during market hours. Brent crude oil trades six days a week on the ICE exchange. On Sundays, you’ll see the last recorded closing price from the previous trading session.

What is today’s WTI crude oil price?

Today’s live WTI crude oil spot price is shown at the top of this page, updated every 60 seconds during market hours. WTI crude oil trades on NYMEX from Sunday through to Friday, 5 PM to 4 PM CT. If you check live prices on Saturdays, you will always see the last recorded WTI crude price from the previous Friday.

What was the highest ever oil price?

The highest ever historical WTI crude oil price was $141.63 per barrel, reached in July 2008. Other significant historical highs include $77.74 per barrel in July 2006 and $109.50 per barrel in August 2013. You can explore the full price history using the interactive chart above.