Methodology, Data Sources & Oil Market Glossary

Methodology, Data Sources & Glossary

Where the data comes from

Live futures (WTI, Brent, natural gas, RBOB, heating oil) — Yahoo Finance front-month contracts, refreshed every 5 minutes.
WTI forward curve — Yahoo Finance monthly CL contracts (the next nine deliveries), refreshed every 5 minutes.
US Weekly Petroleum Status & Market Indicators — U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) open-data API: crude, gasoline and distillate stocks, refinery utilization, field production and Lower-48 natural-gas storage. EIA publishes weekly (petroleum Wednesdays, gas Thursdays); we re-check hourly.
Global crude benchmarks — scraped hourly from public OilPrice.com price tables.
Strategic petroleum reserves — the US row auto-updates from the EIA SPR series (WCSSTUS1); other countries are hand-curated from each agency's published figures (IEA, METI, KNOC, PPAC and others), with the source linked on every row.
News — RSS headlines from EIA, OilPrice, Rigzone, BBC, FT Energy and Hellenic Shipping; sentiment and category tags are derived automatically from the headline text.

Prices are indicative and may be delayed up to 15 minutes. This site is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.

Key terms

WTI vs. Brent: WTI (West Texas Intermediate) is the US light-sweet crude benchmark priced at Cushing, Oklahoma; Brent is the international North Sea benchmark. The Brent–WTI spread reflects transport, quality and regional supply differences.
3:2:1 crack spread: A proxy for refining margin: the value of 2 barrels of gasoline plus 1 barrel of distillate produced from 3 barrels of crude, expressed in $/bbl. Wider cracks signal stronger refining economics.
Contango & backwardation: The shape of the futures curve. Backwardation (front prices above later months) signals tight prompt supply; contango (later months higher) signals ample supply and rewards storage.
EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report: The most market-moving weekly US dataset — crude and product inventories, refinery runs and production. A larger-than-expected inventory build is typically bearish for crude; a draw is bullish.
Days of import cover: How many days a country's strategic reserve would cover its net oil imports — the standard comparable measure of reserve adequacy (the IEA obligation is 90 days).

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do the oil prices on this site come from?

Live WTI, Brent, natural gas, RBOB gasoline and heating-oil quotes are front-month futures from Yahoo Finance, refreshed every 5 minutes. Global crude benchmark prices are collected hourly from public OilPrice.com price tables. US inventory, production and retail fuel figures come from the official EIA open-data API.

How often is the data updated?

Live futures refresh every 5 minutes while a page is open. Cached datasets (price history, benchmarks, EIA fundamentals, reserves) refresh hourly. EIA weekly series update on their official schedule: petroleum data Wednesdays, natural-gas storage Thursdays, retail pump prices Mondays.

Are the prices real-time?

Prices are indicative and may be delayed up to 15 minutes. When a live quote is unavailable the site shows N/A rather than a substituted or estimated number — no figures are ever faked.

Can I reuse or cite this data?

Yes — every dataset is downloadable free in CSV or JSON from the downloads page, and citing World Oil Monitor with a link is appreciated. Underlying government data (EIA, CFTC) is public domain.

Why do WTI and Brent prices differ?

WTI is priced for delivery at Cushing, Oklahoma and reflects US supply-demand; Brent is a waterborne North Sea benchmark used for most international cargoes. Transport costs, crude quality and regional balances keep a spread between them — usually a few dollars per barrel.