As oil crashes due to the impact of the coronavirus, it’s easy to overlook an even more dismal reality for producers: The real prices they’re getting for their barrels are worse still.
Having collapsed by about 60 per cent this year, Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude have stabilised at around $25 a barrel, but the price rout is far deeper for actual cargoes, which are changing hands at large and widening discounts to the global benchmarks. The discounts mean that in the physical market, some crude streams are trading at $15, $10 and even as little as $8 a barrel.
