2. Light crude oil: West Texas Intermediate crude oil (WTI) is a vocabulary translated from English West Texas Intermediate crude oil into Chinese. Also known as Texas light sweet crude oil, it is one of the two crude oils with the most market indicators, and the other is Brent crude oil in the North Sea. West Texas crude oil usually refers to crude oil imported from Canada and the Gulf of Mexico and then transported to the midwest and coastal areas of the United States for refining. This kind of crude oil is also called light and low sulfur crude oil, which means that the crude oil has low viscosity and low sulfur content, accounting for only 0.24%. West Dezhou Intermediate crude oil is suitable for refining gasoline, diesel oil, hot fuel oil and aircraft fuel oil, which can increase the output value of refineries and is a kind of crude oil with high utilization rate.
3. Heavy crude oil: internationally influential benchmark crude oil, as well as Brent crude oil in Europe. The Brent crude oil contract listed on ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) also determines the price of Brent crude oil. Brent crude oil follows the trend of WTI crude oil most of the time, and sometimes deviates from or affects WTI oil price. In addition, Oman crude oil in Dubai, Tabusse crude oil in Asia and Bonny crude oil in Africa are all regional benchmark crude oils, but because of their small influence, they follow the trend of WTI and Brent crude oil most of the time, so they are rarely used as reference.
4. The US government controls the price of WTI crude oil futures contracts in various ways, including the conventional energy data of the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) every Wednesday and the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) weekly position report. Since 2008, there have been many obvious deviations between WTI price and spot market. This has aroused the dissatisfaction of international crude oil spot traders and threatened to give up WTI pricing. At the end of 2009, Saudi Arabia proposed to abandon WTI pricing and change to a package of oil prices of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. However, in the short term, despite the controversy, WTI remains as unshakable as the US dollar.