US Crude Oil Market Dashboard

Forward curves

Settlement-month futures prices, $/barrel. A falling curve (backwardation) signals a tight prompt market; a rising curve (contango) signals surplus supply.

Crude oil headlines

Latest stories from BOE Report and the EIA, refreshed every 2 hours. Headlines link to the publisher's site.

Commercial crude versus the five-year range

Million barrels, by week of the year. The shaded band is the range of the previous five years.

All stocks, latest week

World liquids balance (EIA forecast)

World production minus consumption, million barrels a day. Above zero, global inventories build; below zero, they draw.

Crack spreads, past year

3-2-1 = (2 barrels of RBOB gasoline + 1 barrel of heating oil − 3 barrels of WTI) ÷ 3. Product futures converted at 42 gallons a barrel.

Product prices versus crude

Front-month futures, $/barrel.

Where crude tankers are and where they are heading Loading

Positions come from public AIS data (aisstream.io, shore-based receivers only), so ships in mid-ocean drop out until they near a coast. There is no free reference list of crude tankers, so ships are picked out from what they broadcast: an AIS tanker type and a length of 235 m or more. That covers ULCCs (375 m+, about 3 million barrels; only a handful are in service), VLCCs (320–374 m, about 2 million barrels), Suezmaxes (265–319 m, about 1 million barrels) and Aframaxes (235–264 m, about 0.75 million barrels). LR2 product tankers are the same size as Aframaxes and cannot be told apart from AIS alone, so that class is shown as "Aframax / LR2". LNG carriers on our LNG reference list, gas carriers and floating production or storage units are left out. A ship is only recognised once its type and length have been heard; they are then remembered for 21 days.

"At US port" means heard within 30 km of a US crude port or terminal in the last 24 hours (Corpus Christi, Houston, Texas City, Freeport, Beaumont / Nederland, Port Arthur, LOOP, St. James, Long Beach / Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, Valdez, Delaware Bay), or stopped in the Gulf of Mexico lightering area off Texas and Louisiana, where very large tankers transfer cargo to smaller ones. "Bound for US" uses the destination the crew types into AIS, which is not always kept up to date. "Left US" means the ship was at a US port in the last 60 days and has since sailed. For a ship out of range that was underway to a port we recognise, the map shows an estimated position (hollow marker): its last speed projected along standard shipping lanes, with an estimated arrival. Loaded? is read from the draught each ship broadcasts against the usual range for its class (a VLCC sits about 20–22.5 m deep loaded and 9–11 m empty). Click a tile or button to show only those ships on the map and in the list, and click a ship on the map or in the list to open its public VesselFinder page.