WTI-Brent Spread, November 2026: What a $7.49 Gap Says After a Volatile Year
The Brent-WTI spread closed at $7.49 on November 6, 2026, with WTI at $90.83 and Brent at $98.32. That is a long way from the $16.97 peak in March and the brief April inversion when WTI traded above Brent. This refresh rebuilds the February analysis from the site's own price series, corrects its figures, and explains what moves the gap.
Last updated: November 7, 2026. To report an error, write to hello@petroeyes.com and see our editorial policy.
The Short Answer
Short Answer: The Brent-WTI spread stood at $7.49 per barrel on November 6, 2026, with WTI at $90.83 and Brent at $98.32. The gap is close to its level of a year ago, but the path here was rough: the spread peaked at $16.97 on March 31, 2026, then inverted to -$3.68 on April 7, when WTI briefly traded above Brent. A spread near $7 tells a calmer story than either extreme. US crude is cheap enough to keep exports flowing, but not so cheap that it signals a pipeline bottleneck or a glut at Cushing. What matters now is the direction of the next move, and that depends on US inventories, refinery demand, and whether Brent keeps falling faster than WTI.
The Spread Today, in the Site's Own Numbers
Every figure in this section comes from PetroEyes' own refreshed price series, last updated November 7, 2026. The series tracks daily closes for both benchmarks and computes the spread as Brent minus WTI, so a positive number means Brent costs more than WTI.
| Date | WTI | Brent | Brent-WTI spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| November 6, 2026 | $90.83 | $98.32 | $7.49 |
| October 30, 2026 | $104.12 | $117.64 | $13.52 |
| October 16, 2026 | $101.41 | $109.86 | $8.45 |
| October 9, 2026 | $91.85 | $104.72 | $12.87 |
| October 2, 2026 | $91.11 | $102.25 | $11.14 |
| February 6, 2026 | $63.55 | $68.05 | $4.50 |
Source: PetroEyes price series, daily closes.
Three things stand out in that table. First, the spread has spent the autumn between roughly $7 and $14, which is a normal range for recent years, not a crisis range. Second, the spread narrowed sharply in the first week of November, from $13.52 on October 30 to $7.49 on November 6, because Brent fell $19.32 in that week while WTI fell $13.29. When Brent falls faster than WTI, the gap closes. Third, both benchmarks are far above their February levels: WTI is up about $27 from $63.55 and Brent is up about $30 from $68.05. The market of November is a higher-price market than the market of February, and the spread has to be read in that context.
The daily range on November 6 adds texture. WTI traded between $89.07 and $92.53, while Brent traded between $96.65 and $100.92. Brent briefly touched $100 during the session and still closed below it. A spread that moves several dollars inside a single week, as this one did between October 30 and November 6, is a spread responding to news and flows, not a spread stuck at a structural level.
What the Spread Actually Measures
The Brent-WTI spread is the price difference between the two benchmarks that price most of the world's crude oil. Brent is the seaborne benchmark, priced off North Sea cargoes that can sail anywhere. WTI is the landlocked benchmark, priced at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the NYMEX futures contract. When the spread is wide, the world is paying a premium for seaborne barrels over barrels stuck in the middle of the United States. When it is narrow, that premium has mostly disappeared.
It helps to think of the spread as a transport and logistics price, not a quality price. WTI and Brent are both light, sweet crudes, so the grade difference explains little of the gap. What explains it is the cost and difficulty of moving a barrel from where it is produced to where it is wanted. A barrel at Cushing has to travel by pipeline to the Gulf Coast, load onto a tanker, and cross an ocean before it competes with a Brent cargo. When that journey is cheap and easy, the spread narrows toward the cost of the trip. When pipelines are full, when storage at Cushing is tight, or when seaborne supply is disrupted, the spread widens.
That is why the spread matters beyond the trading screen. A wide spread is a signal to US producers and exporters: your crude is cheap relative to the world price, so export it. A narrow spread is the opposite signal: the arbitrage has thinned, and the export incentive is weaker. Refiners read it the other way round. Gulf Coast refiners buy WTI-linked crude, so a wide spread is a feedstock discount for them. European refiners buy Brent-linked crude, so the same wide spread is a cost penalty. The same number is good news on one side of the Atlantic and bad news on the other, which is why it is watched so closely.
A Volatile Year in the Spread
The 52-week picture puts the current $7.49 in perspective. Across the 255 trading days in our series from November 7, 2025 to November 6, 2026, the spread averaged $5.73. It ranged from a low of -$3.68 to a high of $16.97, a swing of more than $20 inside a single year. That is a wide range for a number that often sits quietly between $3 and $8, and it tells you the year had real stress in it.
| 52-week spread statistic | Value | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Current (November 6, 2026) | $7.49 | November 6, 2026 |
| 52-week average | $5.73 | November 7, 2025 to November 6, 2026 |
| 52-week high | $16.97 | March 31, 2026 |
| 52-week low | -$3.68 | April 7, 2026 |
| Spread one year ago (February 6, 2026) | $4.50 | February 6, 2026 |
Source: PetroEyes price series.
The March 31 peak of $16.97 is the number that needs the most explaining, because a spread that wide means Brent was carrying a large premium over WTI. A premium that size usually points to seaborne supply stress, a strong pull for Atlantic Basin barrels, or both, while US barrels were comparatively plentiful at Cushing. The peak did not last. Within a week the spread had inverted to -$3.68 on April 7, meaning WTI settled above Brent for the day. An inversion is rare and worth pausing on: it says that on that day, a landlocked barrel in Oklahoma was worth more than a seaborne barrel in the North Sea. That can happen when US supply tightens suddenly, when Cushing stocks draw fast, or when Brent weakens on its own news while WTI holds firm. The inversion lasted only briefly, and the spread spent the rest of the year working back into its normal range, but the two extremes frame the year. Anyone who traded the spread in 2026 had to survive both a $17 gap and a negative one.
The autumn tells a quieter story. From early October to early November the spread moved between $7.49 and $13.52, narrowing as Brent fell harder than WTI. That pattern, Brent leading the move down, is worth noting because it is the opposite of the spring pattern, when Brent led the move up to the March peak. The spread is not a one-way bet on US weakness or strength. It moves both ways, and the direction of the move says as much as the level.
What Is Holding the Spread Near $7
Four forces are doing most of the work right now, and each can be checked against a number on this site.
US crude inventories are below their five-year average, but not tight. The EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the week ending October 30, 2026, released November 4, put US commercial crude stocks at 409.8 million barrels, down 0.9 million barrels on the week and 5.3 percent below the five-year average of 432.8 million barrels. That is a draw, not a build, and it supports WTI relative to Brent. But 409.8 million barrels is not a shortage level. It is a middling stock position, and it argues for a spread in the middle of its range rather than at an extreme. Our EIA inventory analysis tracks this series every week.
Cushing is balanced. Stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma stood at 27.2 million barrels in the same EIA report, up 0.3 million barrels on the week. Cushing is the delivery point that sets the WTI price, so its stock level is the most direct physical read on the benchmark. A rising Cushing stockpile pressures WTI down and widens the spread; a falling one does the opposite. A small 0.3 million barrel build is close to flat, which matches a spread that is neither blowing out nor collapsing. The Cushing delivery point guide explains why this one storage hub carries so much weight.
Refineries are running hard. US refineries processed 16.7 million barrels per day in the week ending October 30, up 199,000 barrels per day from the previous week, at 94.5 percent capacity utilization. High refinery runs pull crude out of storage and into products, which supports crude prices generally and WTI in particular, since Gulf Coast refiners are the largest buyers of WTI-linked barrels. Gasoline output averaged 9.7 million barrels per day and distillate production was 5.2 million barrels per day. Strong runs are a spread-narrowing force when they are sustained, because they keep the domestic market absorbing US barrels instead of pushing them toward export at a discount.
The drilling picture is steady, not surging. The US rig count stood at 604 in the week ending November 6, 2026, up one rig on the week, with 463 oil-directed rigs. Our November rig count status check works through the basin detail behind that flat headline.
None of these four forces points to an extreme. That is the point. A $7.49 spread is what you get when inventories are a little below average, Cushing is flat, refineries are busy, and drilling is steady. The spread is doing its job as a summary statistic: it is telling you the physical market is balanced, with a modest premium for seaborne barrels.
Why the Spread Widens and Why It Narrows
The mechanics are worth spelling out, because they turn the spread from a number on a screen into a tool for reading the market.
The spread widens when Brent rises faster than WTI, or when WTI falls faster than Brent. The usual causes on the Brent side are seaborne supply disruptions, strong Atlantic Basin demand, or a weaker dollar making dollar-priced Brent cheaper for foreign buyers. The usual causes on the WTI side are a build at Cushing, pipeline constraints between the Permian and the Gulf Coast, or a refinery outage that cuts domestic demand for US barrels. In the spring of 2026, the move to $16.97 was a Brent-side story: the world price carried the premium while US barrels stayed comparatively cheap.
The spread narrows when the reverse happens. WTI rises faster than Brent when Cushing draws down, when US exports surge, or when domestic refinery demand is strong. Brent falls faster than WTI when seaborne supply recovers or Atlantic demand softens. The first week of November 2026 was a narrowing driven by Brent falling faster, down $19.32 against WTI's $13.29 decline. That is a narrowing that comes with falling prices overall, which is a different signal from a narrowing driven by WTI strength. A spread that narrows because both benchmarks are falling says the whole market is weaker, not that US barrels are suddenly scarce.
There is also a seasonal element that readers should keep in mind. Autumn is refinery maintenance season in the United States, and maintenance cuts crude demand temporarily, which can weigh on WTI. Winter brings heating demand, which supports distillate and can pull crude through refineries. These seasonal swings are modest next to the big moves of 2026, but they explain some of the week-to-week wobble in the $7 to $14 autumn range.
What to Watch Next
If you want to track the spread yourself, five numbers cover most of it, and all five are on this site or in the EIA release they come from.
- The spread itself, daily. Our markets page carries live WTI and Brent quotes and the calculated spread series, and the WTI price page and Brent price page give each benchmark its own history.
- US commercial crude stocks, Wednesdays. The EIA release at 10:30 a.m. Eastern is the week's main event for the WTI side. A build larger than expected pressures WTI and widens the spread; a draw does the opposite. The inventory analysis page carries the latest figures.
- Cushing stocks. The Cushing line inside the same EIA release is the most direct read on WTI's delivery point. Watch the direction, not just the level.
- Refinery utilization. Utilization near 94 to 95 percent, as in the latest week, means refiners are absorbing crude. A sharp drop for maintenance or an outage is a WTI-negative event.
- The rig count, Fridays. The Baker Hughes count is a slow-moving indicator, but a sustained rise or fall in oil-directed rigs changes the supply outlook that the spread is pricing. The count is tracked on our rig counts page.
The single most useful habit is to compare the spread move with the inventory move in the same week. When the spread widens on a week when crude stocks built, the market is telling a consistent story. When the spread widens on a week when stocks drew, something else is going on, usually on the Brent side, and that is where the interesting question lives.
The Spread Is Not the Whole Margin
The Brent-WTI spread describes the crude market. It does not describe what refiners earn, and the two can move in opposite directions. A refiner's margin is the crack spread: the difference between the price of refined products and the price of the crude that goes in. Our series tracks two of them. The gasoline crack stood at $25.91 per barrel on November 6, 2026, down from $34.98 on October 30. The heating-oil crack stood at $92.07 per barrel, down from $97.08 a week earlier. Both cracks narrowed in the same week that crude prices fell, which means product prices fell faster than crude prices in that week. Refiners' margins compressed even as the crude market weakened.
That matters because a wide Brent-WTI spread and a strong crack spread are not the same thing, and they reward different players. A wide crude spread helps a Gulf Coast refiner that buys WTI-linked crude, but only if the products it sells hold their price. If gasoline and heating-oil cracks are narrowing at the same time, the feedstock advantage is being eaten from the other side. The heating-oil crack near $92 is still a strong margin by any standard, and it fits with the distillate tightness the EIA reported for the same week, with distillate stocks 13 percent below their five-year average. The gasoline crack near $26 is more ordinary. Reading the crude spread together with the cracks gives a fuller picture of who is actually making money in the chain, and it is a good check against treating any single spread as the whole story.
A Note on This Refresh
This piece replaces a February 2026 analysis whose figures no longer match the record. The February version quoted WTI at $74.25 and Brent at $79.75 with a $5.50 spread; the site's own price series shows WTI at $63.55 and Brent at $68.05 on February 6, 2026, with a $4.50 spread. The February version also made claims about a pipeline expansion, Permian output, pipeline utilization, and diesel crack spreads that cannot be verified against sources read for this refresh, so they have been removed rather than repeated. Every price and spread figure in this refresh is taken from PetroEyes' price series as refreshed on November 7, 2026, and every inventory figure is from the EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the week ending October 30, 2026, as published by the EIA on November 4, 2026. Where this piece explains a mechanism rather than reporting a number, it says so. For the full explainer version of this topic, see our WTI vs Brent spread deep dive.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Brent-WTI spread?
It is the price difference between Brent crude, the seaborne North Sea benchmark, and WTI crude, the US benchmark delivered at Cushing, Oklahoma. It is calculated as Brent minus WTI, so a positive spread means Brent costs more. On November 6, 2026 it was $7.49, with Brent at $98.32 and WTI at $90.83.
Why is Brent usually more expensive than WTI?
Brent is a waterborne crude that can be shipped anywhere, while WTI is produced inland and must travel by pipeline to the Gulf Coast before it can be exported. That transport cost and the logistics around it usually leave WTI trading at a discount to Brent. The discount varies with pipeline capacity, storage at Cushing, and seaborne supply conditions.
Can the spread go negative?
Yes. It reached -$3.68 on April 7, 2026, meaning WTI settled above Brent that day. A negative spread is unusual and usually short-lived. It happens when US supply tightens or Cushing draws quickly while Brent weakens on its own news.
What does a wide spread mean for US oil exports?
A wide spread makes US crude cheap relative to the world price, which encourages exports. Gulf Coast exporters can buy WTI-linked barrels, ship them, and still undercut Brent-linked cargoes. A narrow spread thins that arbitrage and weakens the export incentive.
What does the spread mean for gasoline prices?
Indirectly, not much in the short run. US gasoline is refined mostly from WTI-linked crude, so a wide spread can help US refiners' margins, but retail gasoline prices depend far more on the outright crude price, refinery runs, and local supply. The spread matters more to producers, exporters, and refiners than to drivers.
Where can I track the spread each day?
The markets page on this site carries live WTI and Brent quotes with the calculated spread, and the WTI price page and Brent price page show each benchmark's history. The EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report, released Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, is the main weekly data event behind the WTI side of the spread.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not financial advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any commodity, security, or derivative. Market figures are from PetroEyes' market-data series, last updated November 7, 2026, and from the EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the week ending October 30, 2026. Commodity markets are volatile; do your own research and consult a licensed professional before making investment decisions.
