Oil Prices Are Headed Toward a Land Without Signposts

Oil Prices Are Headed Toward a Land Without Signposts

It's common to talk about West Texas Intermediate crude oil priced at Cushing, Oklahoma as if it's a proxy for the oil market as a whole, but that's never been the case.. While WTI has always been a less important measure of the oil market than it might seem, the current turmoil poses deeper problems.. Taking the North Sea as a pricing point has advantages over landlocked Oklahoma: Its terminals are open to the global tanker trade, and production has been declining in recent years.. The situation seen at Cushing is less likely to be repeated.. Total storage capacity at Dated Brent's five terminals is about 31 million barrels, roughly a third of the 93 million barrels available at Cushing..