Oil Prices -- Bakken Spot HIGHER Than The WTI Spot Price You See On Your Television Crawler

I think you can find just about any price point for North America crude oil if you look long enough, but here are the two sites I think are most important.

First, this is the nicest site because at one glance one can compare a number of spot prices.

Go down that list, and notice that there is a Bakken oil spot price missing.

At least I don't see it. Do you know which one?

It's Bakken delivered to Clearbrook, Minnesota.

Now, go back to the first link. Spot price of --

• North Dakota sweet: $80.57
• WTI: $97.17

Nice spread, huh? Now, the second link --

• Clearbrook, MN, Bakken: $103.54

A huge thank you to Tom for sending me this little nugget. But unless he and I are misreading this data, Bakken oil delivered to Clearbrook, Minnesota, has a nice premium to the WTI price you see on your television crawler. 

These data links, and dozens more, can be found at my "Data Links" page, linked at the top of the page. 

Thoughts, anyone?

**********************************

Interestingly enough, the folks at CLR addressed the pricing differential in their 1Q12 conferent call:

There has been a lot of interest in the last several months about differentials on pipe barrels delivered to Clearbrook Minnesota, and Guernsey, Wyoming, markets and how this market volatility is affecting our net wellhead price realizations.

All of our Red River Unit oil is gathered at the wellhead and piped to Guernsey, Wyoming, where it is marketed. Roughly half of our Bakken oil is currently being railed to markets where it is priced against waterborne barrels, mainly Brent or Louisiana Light Sweet, which has been $17 to $23 higher than WTI during the first quarter of 2012.

Obviously, the rail transportation cost is much higher than pipe. It's been running about $20 to $22 per barrel all-in from the wellhead to the ultimate end market. But even though the rail transportation cost is higher than pipeline, delivery to the coastal markets has provided superior net pricing lately due to the recent high differentials experienced at Clearbrook and Guernsey, especially during March and April.

With the pipelines currently at full capacity, we anticipate our incremental growth over the next 18 to 24 months will be shipped by rail. And we're having no issues getting railcars and capacity. 

We reported last night an average oil differential for the first quarter of 2012 of $12.27 per barrel below WTI, which is considerably above our guidance range of $7 to $9 for a year as a whole. Due to the spikes in oil differentials in early 2012 and continued supply-demand volatility at Clearbrook and Guernsey, we now expect average differentials for the year to be in the range of $9 to $11 per barrel. That's the long-haul transportation picture.

**********************************