The Biggest Oil Price Gap Recorded

The United States actually imports more crude oil than it exports. And here's the math. We bring in about 6. 3 million barrels a day and send out about 4. 1 million. That makes us a net importer, aka consumer, of 2. 2 million barrels a day. You can't be a net importer of something and also be the world's supplier of it. That math just doesn't make sense. And all of this confusion about how much we actually have or don't have is exactly why the price of oil is two completely different numbers depending on where you look. One of those numbers is the paper price. The other is the price oil actually costs in the real world if a country needs a barrel delivered to it today. And the gap between those two numbers is about $35, which is the biggest spread ever recorded in history. The paper price of oil is what's called Brent futures. That's sitting at around $100 a barrel. If you Google what oil is worth right now, that is the number you're going to be shown. But the physical price, which is what it actually costs to buy a real barrel of oil that gets put onto a real ship and delivered to a real refinery, that costs over $130 depending on the day. That is called dated Brent which is oil for actual physical delivery 10 to 30 days in the future.