The shape of the curve does not describe the inventory cycle. It causes it. Here is the whole curve, both benchmarks, every listed month, on a stated date.
Two words explain more oil-market behaviour than any price level does, and most readers meet them without ever being told what they do. Contango and backwardation are shapes: whether a barrel delivered in six months costs more or less than a barrel delivered next month. That shape is not a forecast and it is not sentiment. It is the price of storage, and it determines whether holding oil pays or costs.
This page carries the strip itself — 63 listed WTI contract months out to December 2036 and 26 Brent months, each with its settlement, its move on the day and its open interest, taken from the exchange's own publication of record. The chart is plotted from the same parsed figures as the tables, so the picture and the numbers cannot disagree.
It also carries the open-interest column beside every price, because a settlement is published for months in which almost nothing trades, and a reader who plots those without looking at the volume behind them is reading a margin calculation as though it were a market.
Prepared by The Baratelli Institute · publication date September 10, 2026. Every figure below carries its own measurement date, which is set by whoever measured it and is often older than this page.
Settlement prices for trade date Wednesday, September 9, 2026. Not a forecast: each point is a price at which someone transacted for delivery in that month.
Source: CME Group Daily Bulletin, Section 61, Energy Futures Products, Bulletin #173, FINAL, settlements for trade date Wednesday, September 9, 2026, retrieved September 10, 2026. The chart is generated from the parsed bulletin at build time rather than drawn, which is why it carries no smoothing and no axis break: it is the same data as the two tables below, rendered.
The Institute keeps the bulletin it superseded and parses both, so the reference can print the move and not only the level.
| Benchmark and horizon | Friday, September 4, 2026, $/bbl | Wednesday, September 9, 2026, $/bbl | Change | Change, per cent | What sits at this point on the curve |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WTI front month — October 2026 | $91.48 | $96.05 | +$4.57 | +5.0% | The barrel the market is actually short of. |
| WTI, six months out — April 2027 | $77.01 | $79.27 | +$2.26 | +2.9% | Far enough out that a disruption can plausibly be resolved. |
| WTI, twelve months out — October 2027 | $72.02 | $72.60 | +$0.58 | +0.8% | The horizon most hedging programmes are written against. |
| WTI, twenty-four months out — October 2028 | $68.64 | $68.71 | +$0.07 | +0.1% | Past the disruption, into the market's supply-cost view. |
| WTI, sixty months out — December 2031 | $62.45 | $61.59 | −$0.86 | −1.4% | The flat end — a long-run supply cost, not this month's shortage. |
| Brent front month — November 2026 | $96.28 | $101.21 | +$4.93 | +5.1% | The seaborne benchmark, on its own delivery schedule. |
| Brent, twelve months out — November 2027 | $77.22 | $78.18 | +$0.96 | +1.2% | The same horizon as the WTI row above it. |
| Backwardation, front month against twelve months out | $19.46 | $23.45 | +$3.99 | +20.5% | Not a price. The width of the curve, which is what pays or charges a holder of physical oil. |
Sources: CME Group Daily Bulletin, Section 61, Energy Futures Products, Bulletin #171, FINAL, settlements for trade date Friday, September 4, 2026; and CME Group Daily Bulletin, Section 61, Energy Futures Products, Bulletin #173, FINAL, settlements for trade date Wednesday, September 9, 2026. Both artifacts ship with this reference and both are parsed at build time. Every figure in the table is a subtraction between the two documents, so no number here can drift away from either of them. Elapsed: five calendar days, three trading sessions — September 7 was Labor Day and the exchange was closed.
The front month moved +$4.57 a barrel, or +5.0%, in three trading sessions. The December 2031 contract, five years out, moved −$0.86. That is the whole shape of this market in two numbers: the near end is repricing a physical disruption and the far end is not moving at all, because nothing about the long-run cost of producing a barrel changed in a week.
The width of the curve is the figure to watch rather than the level. Backwardation twelve months out went from $19.46 to $23.45 — the market increased what it is paying holders of physical oil to release it, which is a statement about tightness that survives even if one thinks the outright price is wrong.
A forward curve is not a reference figure that ages gracefully. Between these two bulletins the front month moved +5.0% and the twelve-month spread moved +20.5%. A correctly dated, correctly cited, five-day-old curve was already describing a market that had moved on. Labelling it was honest and it was not sufficient.
So the Institute's practice on this ledger is to refresh against the exchange's bulletin every business day it publishes, keep the superseded artifact rather than discard it, and print the difference. The date on a figure tells a reader when it was measured. It does not tell them whether the measurement still holds — and on this particular series, over this particular week, it did not.
NYMEX Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI), contract code CL. Physically delivered at Cushing, Oklahoma. Every spread and every share in this table is computed from the settlement column, not transcribed.
| Contract month | Settlement $/bbl | Change on the day | Spread to front month | As a share of the front month | Open interest, contracts | Share of the strip's open interest | Distance out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | $96.05 | +$3.02 | — | — | 214,897 | 10.99% | front month |
| November 2026 | $92.87 | +$2.68 | −$3.18 | -3.3% | 226,184 | 11.57% | 1 months out |
| December 2026 | $89.32 | +$2.18 | −$6.73 | -7.0% | 209,087 | 10.69% | 2 months out |
| January 2027 | $86.29 | +$1.83 | −$9.76 | -10.2% | 111,808 | 5.72% | 3 months out |
| February 2027 | $83.64 | +$1.53 | −$12.41 | -12.9% | 58,715 | 3.00% | 4 months out |
| March 2027 | $81.31 | +$1.23 | −$14.74 | -15.3% | 72,954 | 3.73% | 5 months out |
| April 2027 | $79.27 | +$0.93 | −$16.78 | -17.5% | 52,225 | 2.67% | 6 months out |
| May 2027 | $77.55 | +$0.65 | −$18.50 | -19.3% | 43,989 | 2.25% | 7 months out |
| June 2027 | $76.12 | +$0.40 | −$19.93 | -20.7% | 125,826 | 6.43% | 8 months out |
| July 2027 | $74.93 | +$0.20 | −$21.12 | -22.0% | 45,562 | 2.33% | 9 months out |
| August 2027 | $73.96 | +$0.07 | −$22.09 | -23.0% | 33,320 | 1.70% | 10 months out |
| September 2027 | $73.20 | unch | −$22.85 | -23.8% | 51,956 | 2.66% | 11 months out |
| October 2027 | $72.60 | $-0.02 | −$23.45 | -24.4% | 35,481 | 1.81% | 12 months out |
| November 2027 | $72.12 | $-0.01 | −$23.93 | -24.9% | 42,098 | 2.15% | 13 months out |
| December 2027 | $71.69 | $-0.01 | −$24.36 | -25.4% | 173,953 | 8.90% | 14 months out |
| January 2028 | $71.27 | unch | −$24.78 | -25.8% | 30,450 | 1.56% | 15 months out |
| February 2028 | $70.89 | +$0.01 | −$25.16 | -26.2% | 17,524 | 0.90% | 16 months out |
| March 2028 | $70.55 | +$0.01 | −$25.50 | -26.5% | 26,298 | 1.34% | 17 months out |
| April 2028 | $70.24 | unch | −$25.81 | -26.9% | 25,157 | 1.29% | 18 months out |
| May 2028 | $69.97 | unch | −$26.08 | -27.2% | 11,219 | 0.57% | 19 months out |
| June 2028 | $69.73 | unch | −$26.32 | -27.4% | 54,690 | 2.80% | 20 months out |
| July 2028 | $69.46 | $-0.01 | −$26.59 | -27.7% | 11,757 | 0.60% | 21 months out |
| August 2028 | $69.19 | $-0.03 | −$26.86 | -28.0% | 10,180 | 0.52% | 22 months out |
| September 2028 | $68.95 | $-0.04 | −$27.10 | -28.2% | 18,732 | 0.96% | 23 months out |
| October 2028 | $68.71 | $-0.07 | −$27.34 | -28.5% | 6,134 | 0.31% | 24 months out |
| November 2028 | $68.50 | $-0.10 | −$27.55 | -28.7% | 9,115 | 0.47% | 25 months out |
| December 2028 | $68.29 | $-0.12 | −$27.76 | -28.9% | 90,347 | 4.62% | 26 months out |
| January 2029 | $68.04 | $-0.14 | −$28.01 | -29.2% | 6,584 | 0.34% | 27 months out |
| February 2029 | $67.80 | $-0.16 | −$28.25 | -29.4% | 4,911 | 0.25% | 28 months out |
| March 2029 | $67.59 | $-0.16 | −$28.46 | -29.6% | 10,381 | 0.53% | 29 months out |
| April 2029 | $67.39 | $-0.17 | −$28.66 | -29.8% | 3,036 | 0.16% | 30 months out |
| May 2029 | $67.20 | $-0.19 | −$28.85 | -30.0% | 3,606 | 0.18% | 31 months out |
| June 2029 | $67.03 | $-0.19 | −$29.02 | -30.2% | 19,215 | 0.98% | 32 months out |
| July 2029 | $66.82 | $-0.21 | −$29.23 | -30.4% | 4,715 | 0.24% | 33 months out |
| August 2029 | $66.62 | $-0.22 | −$29.43 | -30.6% | 447 | 0.02% | 34 months out |
| September 2029 | $66.43 | $-0.22 | −$29.62 | -30.8% | 2,515 | 0.13% | 35 months out |
| October 2029 | $66.25 | $-0.23 | −$29.80 | -31.0% | 383 | 0.02% | 36 months out |
| November 2029 | $66.09 | $-0.23 | −$29.96 | -31.2% | 651 | 0.03% | 37 months out |
| December 2029 | $65.90 | $-0.24 | −$30.15 | -31.4% | 48,151 | 2.46% | 38 months out |
| January 2030 | $65.66 | $-0.26 | −$30.39 | -31.6% | 446 | 0.02% | 39 months out |
| February 2030 | $65.46 | $-0.27 | −$30.59 | -31.8% | 60 | 0.00% | 40 months out |
| March 2030 | $65.27 | $-0.29 | −$30.78 | -32.0% | 250 | 0.01% | 41 months out |
| April 2030 | $65.10 | $-0.31 | −$30.95 | -32.2% | 60 | 0.00% | 42 months out |
| May 2030 | $64.96 | $-0.32 | −$31.09 | -32.4% | 285 | 0.01% | 43 months out |
| June 2030 | $64.78 | $-0.33 | −$31.27 | -32.6% | 5,320 | 0.27% | 44 months out |
| July 2030 | $64.56 | $-0.34 | −$31.49 | -32.8% | 285 | 0.01% | 45 months out |
| August 2030 | $64.38 | $-0.34 | −$31.67 | -33.0% | 60 | 0.00% | 46 months out |
| September 2030 | $64.21 | $-0.35 | −$31.84 | -33.1% | 170 | 0.01% | 47 months out |
| October 2030 | $64.06 | $-0.36 | −$31.99 | -33.3% | 60 | 0.00% | 48 months out |
| November 2030 | $63.90 | $-0.36 | −$32.15 | -33.5% | 145 | 0.01% | 49 months out |
| December 2030 | $63.72 | $-0.37 | −$32.33 | -33.7% | 17,427 | 0.89% | 50 months out |
| January 2031 | $63.50 | $-0.38 | −$32.55 | -33.9% | 145 | 0.01% | 51 months out |
| June 2031 | $62.62 | $-0.45 | −$33.43 | -34.8% | 1,588 | 0.08% | 56 months out |
| July 2031 | $62.42 | $-0.46 | −$33.63 | -35.0% | 4 | 0.00% | 57 months out |
| December 2031 | $61.59 | $-0.52 | −$34.46 | -35.9% | 7,452 | 0.38% | 62 months out |
| June 2032 | $60.48 | $-0.62 | −$35.57 | -37.0% | 152 | 0.01% | 68 months out |
| August 2032 | $60.09 | $-0.65 | −$35.96 | -37.4% | 2 | 0.00% | 70 months out |
| December 2032 | $59.44 | $-0.71 | −$36.61 | -38.1% | 5,569 | 0.28% | 74 months out |
| December 2033 | $57.36 | $-0.85 | −$38.69 | -40.3% | 1,605 | 0.08% | 86 months out |
| December 2034 | $55.44 | $-0.90 | −$40.61 | -42.3% | 78 | 0.00% | 98 months out |
| December 2035 | $53.51 | $-0.94 | −$42.54 | -44.3% | 21 | 0.00% | 110 months out |
| February 2036 | $53.24 | $-0.94 | −$42.81 | -44.6% | 32 | 0.00% | 112 months out |
| December 2036 | $51.58 | $-0.94 | −$44.47 | -46.3% | 27 | 0.00% | 122 months out |
| Total, all listed months | — | — | — | — | 1,955,496 | 100.00% | 63 listed contract months |
Source: CME Group Daily Bulletin, Section 61, Energy Futures Products, Bulletin #173, FINAL, settlements for trade date Wednesday, September 9, 2026, retrieved September 10, 2026. The open-interest column sums to 1,955,496 contracts, which is the total the exchange prints for the contract on the same page. That agreement is the Institute's check that the strip above is complete rather than a selection: a missing month would break the total, and the build fails if it does.
Read the open-interest column before the price column. A settlement is published for every listed month out to the end of the strip, and a reader who plots all of them gets a smooth curve that is mostly not a market. The far months carry open interest in the dozens against hundreds of thousands at the front: those settlements are the exchange marking a position for margin purposes, not a price at which anyone is transacting. The curve is informative where the money is, and the open-interest column is how a reader tells the difference.
The concentration is worth a number rather than an adjective. 63.7% of this strip's open interest sits inside the first twelve months and 87.1% inside the first twenty-four, across 63 listed months running to December 2036. The first month with fewer than a thousand contracts open is August 2029, at 447 — against 214,897 in the front month. A settlement of $51.58 for December 2036 is a real published number and it is not a market view of 2036.
NYMEX Brent Oil Last Day Financial, contract code BZ. Financially settled against the Brent index rather than physically delivered, and listed thinly beyond the front two years.
| Contract month | Settlement $/bbl | Change on the day | Spread to front month | As a share of the front month | Open interest, contracts | Share of the strip's open interest | Distance out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 2026 | $101.21 | +$3.29 | — | — | 30,312 | 11.53% | front month |
| December 2026 | $97.10 | +$2.72 | −$4.11 | -4.1% | 43,898 | 16.70% | 1 months out |
| January 2027 | $93.60 | +$2.30 | −$7.61 | -7.5% | 24,159 | 9.19% | 2 months out |
| February 2027 | $90.66 | +$1.93 | −$10.55 | -10.4% | 21,998 | 8.37% | 3 months out |
| March 2027 | $88.21 | +$1.62 | −$13.00 | -12.8% | 19,334 | 7.35% | 4 months out |
| April 2027 | $86.09 | +$1.31 | −$15.12 | -14.9% | 7,967 | 3.03% | 5 months out |
| May 2027 | $84.28 | +$1.03 | −$16.93 | -16.7% | 9,651 | 3.67% | 6 months out |
| June 2027 | $82.74 | +$0.79 | −$18.47 | -18.2% | 27,211 | 10.35% | 7 months out |
| July 2027 | $81.47 | +$0.60 | −$19.74 | -19.5% | 5,174 | 1.97% | 8 months out |
| August 2027 | $80.42 | +$0.46 | −$20.79 | -20.5% | 5,612 | 2.13% | 9 months out |
| September 2027 | $79.54 | +$0.36 | −$21.67 | -21.4% | 7,557 | 2.87% | 10 months out |
| October 2027 | $78.80 | +$0.29 | −$22.41 | -22.1% | 4,128 | 1.57% | 11 months out |
| November 2027 | $78.18 | +$0.24 | −$23.03 | -22.8% | 3,262 | 1.24% | 12 months out |
| December 2027 | $77.63 | +$0.20 | −$23.58 | -23.3% | 25,678 | 9.77% | 13 months out |
| January 2028 | $77.11 | +$0.16 | −$24.10 | -23.8% | 1,714 | 0.65% | 14 months out |
| February 2028 | $76.64 | +$0.13 | −$24.57 | -24.3% | 3,275 | 1.25% | 15 months out |
| March 2028 | $76.24 | +$0.12 | −$24.97 | -24.7% | 1,377 | 0.52% | 16 months out |
| April 2028 | $75.88 | +$0.11 | −$25.33 | -25.0% | 73 | 0.03% | 17 months out |
| May 2028 | $75.54 | +$0.08 | −$25.67 | -25.4% | 2 | 0.00% | 18 months out |
| June 2028 | $75.21 | +$0.04 | −$26.00 | -25.7% | 3,404 | 1.29% | 19 months out |
| July 2028 | $74.89 | unch | −$26.32 | -26.0% | 99 | 0.04% | 20 months out |
| August 2028 | $74.59 | $-0.04 | −$26.62 | -26.3% | 1 | 0.00% | 21 months out |
| December 2028 | $73.50 | $-0.16 | −$27.71 | -27.4% | 14,695 | 5.59% | 25 months out |
| June 2029 | $72.35 | $-0.28 | −$28.86 | -28.5% | 32 | 0.01% | 31 months out |
| December 2029 | $71.31 | $-0.39 | −$29.90 | -29.5% | 2,196 | 0.84% | 37 months out |
| December 2030 | $69.85 | $-0.55 | −$31.36 | -31.0% | 127 | 0.05% | 49 months out |
| Total, all listed months | — | — | — | — | 262,936 | 100.00% | 26 listed contract months |
Source: CME Group Daily Bulletin, Section 61, Energy Futures Products, Bulletin #173, FINAL, settlements for trade date Wednesday, September 9, 2026, retrieved September 10, 2026. Open interest sums to 262,936 contracts, matching the exchange's printed total for the contract.
Two things a reader should not mistake. Brent's front listed month here is November 2026 while WTI's is October 2026, because the two contracts expire on different schedules — so the raw gap between the two front settlements, $5.16, is partly a difference of delivery month and not only the Brent-WTI quality and location spread. Compared on the same delivery month, December 2026, Brent settles at $97.10 against WTI's $89.32, a spread of $7.78. That is the comparison worth making, and it is the one most commentary does not make.
And this Brent contract is not the Dated Brent physical assessment quoted in the press. It is the NYMEX financial look-alike, settling against the index. The figures on the hub are a different instrument measured on a different clock, and the two should not be set against each other as though one confirmed the other.
The same question the rest of this page explains, answered from the strip above by subtraction.
| Benchmark and horizon | Front month $/bbl | Later month $/bbl | Front less later | As a share of the front month | Shape, on this date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WTI, front against six months out (April 2027) | $96.05 | $79.27 | +$16.78 | 17.5% | Backwardation |
| WTI, front against twelve months out (October 2027) | $96.05 | $72.60 | +$23.45 | 24.4% | Backwardation |
| WTI, front against twenty-four months out (October 2028) | $96.05 | $68.71 | +$27.34 | 28.5% | Backwardation |
| WTI, front against sixty months out (December 2031) | $96.05 | $61.59 | +$34.46 | 35.9% | Backwardation |
| Brent, front against six months out (May 2027) | $101.21 | $84.28 | +$16.93 | 16.7% | Backwardation |
| Brent, front against twelve months out (November 2027) | $101.21 | $78.18 | +$23.03 | 22.8% | Backwardation |
Every figure computed from the settlement column of the two tables above. Sign convention: front minus later, so a positive number is backwardation.
Both benchmarks are in backwardation on this date, and steeply. WTI's front month at $96.05 stands $23.45 above the same benchmark twelve months out, which is 24.4% of the front price. Read that through the third column of the table further down this page and it says the market is paying holders of physical oil to release it, at a rate no storage economics can offset. That is a measurement now, not the inference this page used to carry.
Note where the backwardation stops. The curve falls steeply for about two years and then flattens: from October 2028 at $68.71 to December 2031 at $61.59, it gives up only $7.12 across three further years. The near end is pricing a disruption; the far end is pricing a long-run supply cost, and has barely moved. A reader who wants the market's view of the medium term rather than of this month's shortage should look at the flat part.
| Curve shape | What it means | What it pays a trader to do | What it therefore does to inventory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contango | Later delivery months cost more than the front month. | Buy the physical barrel, pay to store it, sell the forward contract. The spread pays the storage bill and the difference is the profit. | Stocks build. Tanks fill because filling them is the trade, not because anyone is short of demand. |
| Backwardation | The front month costs more than later months. | Sell the barrel now and buy it back forward. Holding inventory costs money twice — the storage and the decline in price. | Stocks draw. Every holder of oil is paid to release it, so inventories fall until the front-month premium disappears. |
| Flat | Little difference between months. | Nothing. There is no carry trade to do. | Stocks move on physical supply and demand alone. |
The third column is the one to read carefully. A futures curve is not a prediction that the market will be at those levels; it is a set of prices at which someone will transact today for later delivery. The trade in that column is available to anyone with a tank, which is why the shape shows up in physical inventory within weeks rather than being merely an opinion about the future.
A commercial oil inventory is not a buffer someone maintains out of prudence. It is a position with a carrying cost: tank rent, insurance, financing, and the loss if the price falls. In contango, the forward market pays that cost for you and a little more, so filling a tank is a low-risk trade rather than an expense. In backwardation the market charges you twice for the same tank, so emptying it is the trade.
That is why inventory data and curve shape must be read together and why reading either alone misleads. A stock build in contango is not evidence of weak demand; it is evidence that the carry trade is on. A stock draw in backwardation is not necessarily evidence of a shortage; it is what the curve is paying holders to do. The mistake is to treat the inventory number as an independent measurement of tightness when it is partly a consequence of the price structure.
There is a second effect that matters to anyone holding an oil fund rather than a barrel. A fund holding front-month futures has to roll its position forward each month. In contango it sells the cheap expiring month and buys a dearer one, losing a little each time; in backwardation the roll gains. Over a year of steep contango that mechanical loss can exceed the change in the spot price itself, which is how an oil price can rise while an oil fund falls. It is not a tracking error. It is the curve.
Across the front-month against six-month WTI spread since 1985, the curve has been in contango about 42 per cent of the time and in backwardation about 58 per cent.
CME Group market insight. The Institute has not established a publication date for this statistic and it is printed here as undated. It is carried on this page because the proportion is instructive — backwardation is the more common state, which surprises most readers, who meet the term during a crisis and assume it is the exception. An undated statistic is a weaker citation than anything else on this reference, and it is labelled as one rather than given a date it does not have.
This page carried no strip until September 9, 2026 and said so at length. The correction is printed rather than quietly removed, because the reasoning that produced the gap is a mistake other researchers are making.
The gap this section previously described is closed, and how it closed is worth stating. The reasoning was that EIA's futures series ends April 5, 2024 and that CME's settlements page renders in the browser rather than in the page source, therefore no reproducible public strip existed. Both premises were true. The conclusion did not follow. CME's publication of record is the Daily Bulletin, and Section 61 of it carries the entire listed strip for every energy contract, free, as a dated document, and had done so every business day throughout. The table below is that document. What was missing was not the data.
Retained under the Two-Clock rule. The earlier text read: “This page carries no dated futures strip, and that is a choice rather than an oversight. The Institute would rather publish a four-point curve that is genuinely sourced and dated than a twelve-point curve assembled from a chart someone eyeballed. What follows instead is the definitional apparatus, the one dated spread the Institute does hold, and a reading of the curve's shape taken from inventory behaviour — which is an inference, and is labelled as one.” It rested on a second observation that is still true: “EIA's own NYMEX futures price series is discontinued. The published note reads that futures prices after April 5, 2024 are not available, so the four contract-month series a reader would reach for first — RCLC1 through RCLC4 — cannot supply a curve on any recent date. CME publishes settlements daily and free, but renders them in the browser rather than in the page source.”
Both premises hold. EIA's contract-month series really does stop at April 5, 2024, and CME's settlements page really does render in the browser rather than in the page source. The error was treating those two surfaces as the whole public record. The exchange's publication of record is the Daily Bulletin, and Section 61 of it — a free, dated PDF — carries every listed contract month with settlement, point change, volume and open interest, and had been published every business day throughout the period this page was calling the strip unobtainable.
The general lesson is the one worth keeping. An institution's most-linked page is rarely its publication of record. A search that stops at the interface a retail user is shown will conclude that data is unavailable when what is actually true is that it is published somewhere less convenient. That failure produces a confident, well-reasoned, wrong statement about the public record — which is harder to catch than an arithmetic slip, because nothing in it looks like an error.
The archived source text ships with this reference as cme_daily_bulletin_s61_20260909.txt rather than being transcribed into the build, and the tables are parsed from it. The bulletin it superseded ships alongside it as cme_daily_bulletin_s61_20260904.txt, which is what the comparison table higher up this page is computed against. One thing about this citation a reader should know before relying on it. The bulletin publishes at a URL ending /current/, which rotates to the next trade date every business day — so the link that produced this table will not produce this table tomorrow, and the archived artifact rather than the link is what the Institute holds. The gap between the measurement clock on these settlements and the publication clock on this page is one business day: the September 9 bulletin was retrieved on the morning of September 10, which is as close as this source comes to live.
Retained and labelled under the Two-Clock rule. Until September 10, 2026 the note above read: “Two things about this citation a reader should know before relying on it. The bulletin publishes at a URL ending /current/, which rotates to the next trade date every business day — so the link that produced this table will not produce this table tomorrow, and the archived artifact rather than the link is what the Institute holds. And the bulletin is one trade date behind: retrieved on September 9 it carried September 4, because September 7 was Labor Day. That is a five-day gap between the measurement clock on these settlements and the publication clock on this page, and it is stated rather than smoothed.”
It is kept rather than deleted because the condition that produced it recurs. Every exchange holiday reopens the same five-day gap, and a reader who arrives on the Friday after Thanksgiving should be able to see that the Institute has met this before and states it rather than smoothing it. The gap on the current table is one business day.
| Dated quote | $ per barrel | Measured | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brent — the seaborne light sweet benchmark | $96.85 | opening quote, September 8, 2026 | A waterborne grade, priced where it can be shipped anywhere. |
| WTI — the inland United States benchmark | $92.69 | opening quote, September 8, 2026 | Priced at Cushing, Oklahoma, and dependent on pipeline capacity to reach the coast. |
| Brent less WTI — the location-and-grade spread | $4.16 | opening quote, September 8, 2026 | A spread between two places and two grades on one date. It is not a spread between two dates, so it says nothing about the curve. |
Brent opened at $96.85 and WTI at $92.69 on the same day, a spread of $4.16 a barrel. That is a real, dated, same-instant spread and it is worth having — but it is a spread between two places and two grades, not between two dates. It says nothing about contango or backwardation, and a reader who takes a Brent-minus-WTI number as a curve reading has confused a map with a calendar.
The distinction is not pedantic in this episode. The Brent-WTI spread has behaved abnormally and has at times inverted, with the inland benchmark trading above the seaborne one — the widest such inversion since 2009. That is a statement about transit and access, which is exactly what one would expect when the constraint is movement. It is on the hub, and the passages it refers to are on the chokepoints ledger.
Two measurements of the same market, from different publishers on different clocks. They agree, and the agreement is the point.
Global observed oil stocks fell about 410 million barrels between end-February and end-July 2026, an average draw of 2.7 million barrels a day sustained across five months, and most of July's decline was in oil on water rather than on land. Sustained draws of that size are the behaviour associated with backwardation: holders being paid to release inventory rather than to keep it.
Until this page carried the strip, that was all it could say, and it said so as an inference from a consequence — because a physical shortage draws stocks and also produces backwardation, so the stock data alone is consistent with either ordering. The strip now settles the first half of it as a measurement. WTI is backwardated by $23.45 over twelve months, or 24.4% of the front price, and Brent by $23.03. No storage economics offsets a carry that negative, so every holder of a tank is being paid to empty it.
What that does not settle is causation, and the improvement should not be overstated. Two independent measurements now agree on the state of the market where before there was one measurement and one inference. Neither establishes which came first, and the Institute is not going to claim it does on the strength of a better citation.
The strip is here, and the reason it took until September 9 is the more useful finding. A daily settlement curve for the most traded commodity on earth is published free, by the exchange, as a dated PDF, every business day. This page spent its first edition explaining why that data could not be obtained. The premises were checked and true; the search stopped at the surface a retail user is shown.
The open-interest column is the part most curve commentary omits, and it changes what the far end means. 63.7% of WTI open interest sits inside twelve months. The December 2036 settlement of $51.58 is a published price with 27 contracts behind it. Quoting it as the market's long-run view of oil, which is done routinely, treats a margin calculation as a forecast.
Read the shape before reading any inventory report. The mechanism further up this page is enough to keep a reader out of the standard error, which is treating a stock build as evidence about demand when it may be evidence about the carry trade. Ask which way the curve is paying first. The same discipline of separating what is measured from what is inferred runs through the basin and fiscal figures on the breakevens ledger.
Prices, the supply and demand balance, refining, the two-clock rule and the plain-English glossary that serves all 13 ledgers.
Back to the hub →LedgerWhere every cent of a $4.48 gallon goes — crude, refining, distribution and tax — with each of the four components on its own clock and three of the four defined differently from how a reader assumes.
Open the ledger →LedgerSeventy-six years of crude prices deflated to constant July 2026 dollars. The 2008 records are still records in real terms and today's are not close.
Open the ledger →LedgerOne central bank, one date, one fixing time. A dollar barrel converted into 29 currencies without mixing thirty sources and thirty clocks.
Open the ledger →LedgerTwo entirely different questions that share one word. The price a well needs and the price a treasury needs, kept rigorously apart — with the gaps in each named.
Open the ledger →LedgerAll 41 countries the OPEC bulletin itemises, ranked, with share of world total and reserve life computed two ways. Venezuela first at 303.701 billion barrels; the United States ninth with a reserve life of 8.4 years.
Open the ledger →LedgerEvery OPEC+ member's output for July 2026 against its implied target and its sustainable capacity. Effective spare capacity is 1.09 mb/d, or 1.07% of a 101.5 mb/d market.
Open the ledger →LedgerThe seven countries that hold the voluntary cuts — not eight, and not the full membership — their August and September 2026 decisions, and why quota discipline is currently the wrong lens.
Open the ledger →Ledger588 rigs turning in the United States, 449 drilling for oil, 1,907 worldwide. A forty per cent move in price has produced a 1.4 per cent move in the American count.
Open the ledger →LedgerCapacity measured on two clocks five months apart, crack spreads computed from same-week legs in both units the market quotes, and the one undated figure on this reference, labelled as such.
Open the ledger →LedgerDiesel at $5.967 a gallon, a nominal record and not a real one. Why distillate is tighter than gasoline, and why distillate fuel oil is not diesel.
Open the ledger →LedgerCommercial crude one per cent above its five-year average in the same week the Strategic Petroleum Reserve reads 39.3% of capacity and its lowest since November 1982. The two facts are causally linked.
Open the ledger →LedgerEight passages, six years of flows each, and bypass capacity that covers under a quarter of Hormuz. Plus what the industry itself expected in April, measured, and how wrong it was.
Open the ledger →Provenance. Reserve figures are transcribed from the OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin; production, spare-capacity, stock and refining figures from the International Energy Agency Oil Market Report; United States production, refinery capacity and inventory figures from the Energy Information Administration; rig counts from the Baker Hughes North America and Worldwide rig counts; benchmark prices from published daily quotes. Each row names its source and the date the figure was measured. Where a figure was not published, or where a published series does not itemise a country, the cell reads n/d rather than carrying a fabricated estimate. Derived quantities — reserve life, shares of world total, capacity utilisation, spare capacity as a share of supply — are computed from the figures shown and are not separately sourced; they inherit the measurement dates of their inputs, and where the two inputs run on different clocks the page says so. The Baratelli Institute is a publisher operating under the Lowe v. SEC publisher exception. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security or commodity. Figures change; verify against the primary source before relying on any of them.