Oil price today: WTI and Brent, per barrel

What this price is

A quoted oil price is almost always a front-month futures price: the contract for the nearest delivery month that is still trading. A barrel is 42 US gallons, or about 159 liters, and crude is priced in US dollars in nearly every market, so the figure means the same thing in Houston, Rotterdam or Singapore before any currency conversion.

WTI (West Texas Intermediate) is a light, low-sulfur crude produced in the United States. Its NYMEX contract is settled by physical delivery at Cushing, Oklahoma, a pipeline junction with one of the largest clusters of storage tanks in the country. Brent is a light North Sea crude blend that is loaded onto tankers, and its ICE futures contract is settled in cash. One is an inland US price and the other a seaborne price, so they rarely match; Brent vs WTI explains the gap and shows it live.

Why another site may show a different number

If the price here doesn't match a TV ticker or another website, the cause is usually one of these:

• A different contract month. WTI's front contract stops trading around the 20th of the month before delivery, and Brent's on the last business day of the second month before delivery. Sites move to the next contract at different moments, and neighboring months are rarely priced the same.
• Futures versus spot. Spot assessments, such as the daily Cushing WTI and Europe Brent series from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), describe physical barrels and are published after the trading day, so they trail a live futures quote.
• Delay and refresh rate. Free market data is often delayed, and every site refreshes on its own schedule. This page reads a cached feed that refreshes every five minutes; the time under the board shows when the quote was recorded.
• A different benchmark. Some reports quote the OPEC Reference Basket, Dubai or a regional grade. Those are assessed once a day and can differ noticeably from both WTI and Brent.

When prices move, and when they stand still

WTI futures trade electronically from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon, New York time, with a one-hour pause each afternoon. Brent follows a similar, nearly round-the-clock schedule on ICE. Nothing trades between Friday's close and Sunday's reopening, so on a weekend the board shows Friday's last price. If something important happens over the weekend, the first trades on Sunday evening can start well away from that level.

Activity is usually heaviest when London and New York are both open and around each exchange's daily settlement. Scheduled data matters too: the EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report, normally released on Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, updates US crude stocks, refinery runs and fuel demand. OPEC+ decisions, sanctions and supply outages arrive on a less predictable timetable.

From a barrel price to a gallon or a liter

Dividing the barrel price by 42 gives the cost of the crude in one US gallon; dividing by about 159 gives the cost per liter. The line under the board does that math with the current quote. It is the raw-material cost only. Refining, transport, retail margins and taxes come on top, which is why fuel prices move less than crude does in percentage terms.

A rule worth remembering: every $1 change per barrel is about 2.4 cents per gallon, or roughly 0.6 US cents per liter. How and when that reaches filling stations is covered in tracking gas prices.

Following the price in the Oil Prices Live app

The website shows WTI and Brent only. In the app, both sit on the Prices tab with the day's open, high and low, the spot price next to the futures price when it is available, and the Brent minus WTI spread. The free version refreshes every 30 minutes and includes one price alert.

Pro updates every 15 seconds while the app is open. It adds natural gas, gasoline and ethanol futures and Urals crude; daily closing prices for the OPEC basket, Dubai, Oman, Western Canadian Select, Alaska North Slope, Gulf Coast jet fuel and Mont Belvieu propane; and the EIA's weekly US averages for retail gasoline and diesel. Pro also unlocks 30 currencies, two years of price history and unlimited price alerts. On iPhone, a home-screen widget shows the latest prices without opening the app.