WTI Crude Oil Price Today - Live NYMEX
Access real-time WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil pricing data through our professional API. The primary oil benchmark for North American markets with live price updates.
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GET /v1/prices/latest?by_code=WTI_USD → $81.47Real-Time Updates
WTI crude prices updated regularly during market hours
Market Authority
Primary benchmark for North American crude oil pricing and trading
API Integration
Simple REST API with comprehensive documentation and code examples
About WTI Crude Oil
Market Overview
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is a grade of crude oil used as a benchmark in oil pricing and is the underlying commodity of the New York Mercantile Exchange's oil futures contracts.
Key Characteristics
- Light sweet crude oil with low sulfur content
- Primary benchmark for North American oil markets
- Traded on NYMEX as futures contracts
- Delivery point: Cushing, Oklahoma
WTI Oil Price Forecast
Based on the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) and market consensus, here are the current WTI crude oil price projections:
Key Price Drivers for 2025:
- OPEC+ Policy: Production cuts and quota compliance affecting global supply
- US Production: Shale growth moderating with discipline on capital spending
- China Demand: Economic recovery pace impacting global oil demand growth
- Geopolitics: Middle East tensions and Russia sanctions affecting supply
Sources: EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (updated monthly), IEA Oil Market Report. Forecasts are estimates and subject to change based on market conditions. View full EIA STEO report →
WTI vs Brent Crude Comparison
Brent–WTI spread: $7.35 per barrel
Frequently Asked Questions About WTI Crude Oil
What is the current WTI crude oil price?
The current WTI crude oil price is $81.47 per barrel, updated 0 minutes ago. This is the live NYMEX futures price for West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the primary benchmark for North American oil markets.
What is WTI crude oil?
WTI (West Texas Intermediate) is a grade of crude oil used as a benchmark in oil pricing. It's a light, sweet crude oil with low sulfur content (0.24%), making it ideal for gasoline refining. WTI is delivered at Cushing, Oklahoma, and is the underlying commodity for NYMEX oil futures contracts.
How often are WTI oil prices updated?
Our WTI crude oil prices are updated regularly during market hours, providing near real-time prices in USD per barrel with timestamps for each update.
What is the difference between WTI and Brent crude?
WTI and Brent are both light, sweet crude oils but differ in origin and pricing. WTI comes from U.S. oil fields and is delivered at Cushing, Oklahoma, while Brent originates from North Sea oil fields. Brent typically trades at a premium to WTI and is used as the global oil pricing benchmark.
What factors affect WTI crude oil prices?
WTI crude oil prices are influenced by:
- Supply & Demand: U.S. oil production and global consumption patterns
- EIA Reports: Weekly U.S. oil inventory data (Wednesdays 10:30 AM ET)
- OPEC Decisions: Production quotas and supply agreements
- Geopolitics: Middle East tensions and global trade policies
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West Texas Intermediate is the U.S. crude benchmark, priced at the pipeline and storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma. Its physical delivery point makes it structurally different from waterborne Brent: WTI prices a landlocked hub whose value depends on pipeline flows and storage capacity, which is why the Brent-WTI spread exists and why it moves. Several distinct series trade under the WTI name; this page states which one it serves.
Which WTI number this is
This page serves a spot-basis WTI price from market-reporting sources. Separate code families carry the NYMEX futures contracts (WTI_FUTURES_YYYY_MM, one per delivery month) and continuous front-month series. The distinction matters most near expiry: each WTI futures contract stops trading around the 20th of the month before delivery, roughly three business days before the 25th, adjusted for weekends. During the delivery month itself, the contract named for that month no longer trades at all.
Method note: the expired-contract echo
In August 2026 we observed the August WTI contract - which had stopped trading on 2026-07-21 - reappear in a vendor feed on 2026-08-03 at its final traded price, reproduced to the cent, thirteen days after its last real trade. Fed into a term-structure calculation, that phantom made the front of the curve appear 6 dollars above the live September contract.
The general property: vendor feeds do not reliably return errors for dead contracts; they return stale numbers. Detection cannot use the calendar alone, because expiry schedules differ by product - ICE gasoil legitimately trades into its delivery month while WTI does not. Our pipeline now identifies dead contracts by relative tick density (a live contract produces hundreds of quotes per week; an echo produces a handful) and excludes them from curves and daily bars. Three independent guards - at ingestion, at bar construction, and a scheduled cross-check between our intraday and settlement-derived curves - now watch this failure mode.
Reading the differentials
Brent-WTI reflects the cost and constraint of moving crude between the U.S. mid-continent and tidewater: pipeline capacity, export economics and relative supply. WTI-WCS (Western Canadian Select) prices the discount for heavy, sour Canadian crude delivered at Hardisty, driven by quality difference and takeaway constraints from Alberta. Each differential is an economic signal in its own right, and both are computed from the specific series on this site - the spread endpoints report them directly rather than requiring two separate calls.
WTI Crude Oil FAQ
Why is your WTI different from the number on futures exchanges?
Exchange quotes are per-contract futures prices for specific delivery months. This page serves a spot-basis assessment. They usually track closely, but they are different instruments and diverge measurably near contract expiry and when the curve is steep.
What happened to the August contract in your data?
Each WTI contract stops trading in the month before delivery. Once a contract's own market stops quoting it, our pipeline excludes it from curves and daily summaries even if a vendor feed continues to echo its last price. This exclusion was added in August 2026 after we measured exactly that echo occurring.