On July 7, 2025, the Brent crude oil price stood at 69.62 U.S. dollars per barrel, compared to 67.93 U.S. dollars for WTI oil and 69.92 U.S. dollars for the OPEC basket. Prices rose slightly that week, following signs of an increase in demand.Europe's Brent crude oil, the U.S. WTI crude oil, and OPEC's basket are three of the most important benchmarks used by traders as reference for oil and gasoline prices. Lowest ever oil prices during coronavirus pandemic In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic resulted in crude oil prices hitting a major slump as oil demand drastically declined following lockdowns and travel restrictions. Initial outlooks and uncertainty surrounding the course of the pandemic brought about a disagreement between two of the largest oil producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in early March. Bilateral talks between global oil producers ended in agreement on April 13th, with promises to cut petroleum output and hopes rising that these might help stabilize the oil price in the coming weeks. However, with storage facilities and oil tankers quickly filling up, fears grew over where to store excess oil, leading to benchmark prices seeing record negative prices between April 20 and April 22, 2020. How crude oil prices are determined As with most commodities, crude oil prices are impacted by supply and demand, as well as inventories and market sentiment. However, as oil is most often traded in future contracts (whereby a contract is agreed upon, while the product delivery will follow in the next two to three months), market speculation is one of the principal determinants for oil prices. Traders make conclusions on how production output and consumer demand will likely develop over the coming months, leaving room for uncertainty. Spot prices differ from futures in so far as they reflect the current market price of a commodity.

On April 20th, 2020, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil slumped into negative for the first time in history, falling to negative 37.63 U.S. dollars per barrel. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on the global oil and gas industry. Declining consumer demand and high levels of production output are threatening to exceed oil storage capacities, which resulted in the lowest ever oil prices noted between April 20th and April 22nd.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Fact and Figures page.

Crude Oil rose to 68.75 USD/Bbl on July 11, 2025, up 3.27% from the previous day. Over the past month, Crude Oil's price has risen 1.04%, but it is still 16.37% lower than a year ago, according to trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks the benchmark market for this commodity. Crude Oil - values, historical data, forecasts and news - updated on July of 2025.

Snapshot img

The crude oil market has the potential to grow by 4781.60 million barrels during 2021-2025, and the market’s growth momentum will decelerate at a CAGR of 2.73%.

This crude oil market research report provides valuable insights on the post COVID-19 impact on the market, which will help companies evaluate their business approaches. Furthermore, this report extensively covers market segmentation by production area (onshore and offshore) and geography (APAC, North America, Europe, MEA, and South America). The report also offers information on several market vendors, including BP Plc, Chevron Corp., and ConocoPhillips Co., among others.

What will the Crude Oil Market Size be in 2021?

Browse TOC and LoE with selected illustrations and example pages of Crude Oil Market

Get Your FREE Sample Now!

Crude Oil Market: Key Drivers and Trends

Based on our research output, there has been a negative impact on the market growth during and post COVID-19 era. The increasing upstream investment is notably driving the crude oil market growth, although factors such as fluctuations in global crude oil prices may impede market growth. To unlock information on the key market drivers and the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the crude oil industry get your FREE report sample now.

      The rising energy demand across the world has prompted governments to explore untapped oil and gas resources in the upstream sector, using advanced technologies.
      The production of oil and natural gas is declining from many conventional oilfields. To overcome this issue, oil and gas operators are increasing investments in mature oil and gas fields.
      The adoption of unconventional exploration and production technologies in large shale deposits has widened opportunities for upstream oil and gas companies.
      The growing investments in the upstream oil and gas sector will significantly influence crude oil market growth over the forecast period.




      Technological development in the hydraulic fracturing process is aiding in the exploration and production of oil and gas from shale plays.
      The advances in the drilling technology and proppant placement in downhole wells increased hydrocarbon recovery from unconventional wells.
      Technological advances such as integration of the internet of things (IoT) for data acquisition, as well as the use of data analytics and machine learning, supports the efficiency of tools that is one of the key crude oil market trends.
      Real-time pressure data is crucial in crude oil production as it eliminates the over-fracturing issue.
      Automation of hydraulic fracturing optimizes the hydraulic fracturing method using algorithmic controls and supports enhanced well performance.

This crude oil market analysis report also provides detailed information on other upcoming trends and challenges that will have a far-reaching effect on the market growth. Get detailed insights on the trends and challenges, which will help companies evaluate and develop growth strategies.

Who are the Major Crude Oil Market Vendors?

The report analyzes the market’s competitive landscape and offers information on several market vendors, including:

BP Plc
Chevron Corp.
ConocoPhillips Co.
Exxon Mobil Corp.
PetroChina Co. Ltd.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA
Qatar Petroleum
Rosneft Oil Co.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc
Saudi Arabian Oil Co.

The crude oil market is fragmented and the vendors are deploying various organic and inorganic growth strategies to compete in the market. Click here to uncover other successful business strategies deployed by the vendors.

To make the most of the opportunities and recover from post COVID-19 impact, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Download a free sample of the crude oil market forecast report for insights on complete key vendor profiles. The profiles include information on the production, sustainability, and prospects of the leading companies.

Which are the Key Regions for Crude Oil Market?

For more insights on the market share of various regions Request for a FREE sample now!

44% of the market’s growth will originate from APAC during the forecast period. China, India, and Japan are the key markets for crude oil in APAC. Market growth in this region will be faster than the growth of the market in Europe, North America, and South America.

To garner further competitive intelligence and regional opportunities in store for vendors, view our sample report.

What are the Revenue-generating Production Area Segments in the Crude Oil Market?

To gain further insights on the market contribution of various segments Request for a FREE sample

The crude oil market share growth by the onshore segment will be significant during the forecast period. In onshore exploration and pr

The average spot price for West Texas Intermediate crude oil came to 76.63 U.S. dollars per barrel in 2024, a decrease of nearly one U.S. dollars compared to the previous year. The 2024 average spot price for Brent crude oil was 80.52 U.S. dollars. Both Brent and WTI are light crude oils, with the first used as a benchmark for gasoline prices around the world. Spot prices vs. future prices Spot prices refer to current market prices under which a commodity such as one barrel of crude oil may be bought for immediate delivery. In contrast, future prices refer to settlement and delivery at a later date. As a major refinery and storage hub, Cushing in Oklahoma is the delivery location for WTI traded via the New York Mercantile Exchange. When storage capacities threatened to reach their maximum capacity in April 2020, the WTI oil price crashed as a result, trading at record low prices. The WTI oil price fell into negative numbers for the first time in its history, closing out at negative 37.63 U.S. dollars per barrel on April 20th. The lowest value for Brent prices was 19.33 U.S. dollars per barrel. Influences on oil prices Oil prices are volatile commodities as their trading and delivery is heavily influenced by overall market development and geopolitical events. For example, the Russia-Ukraine war and resulting Russian sanctions brought about fears of supply bottlenecks, which pushed oil prices to decade-highs also reflected in the 2022 annual average.

Correlation defined as linear relationship between two variables. Correlation coefficient (r) is used to measure correlation between two variables and its range varies between -1 to +1. There are two types of correlation namely positive and negative. r=+1 represents perfect positive correlation whereas r=-1 represents perfect negative correlation. Positive correlation tells both indicators are moving in same direction for e.g. If prices of crude oil and Natural gas are positively correlated and there is an increase in price of crude oil then price of Natural gas will also increase. On the other hand negative correlation between the same indicators, if there is increase in price of one will decrease the price of others.

The international crude oil price has experienced significant fluctuations over the past 10 years, influenced by factors such as global demand and supply dynamics, geopolitical events, economic conditions, and policy decisions by major oil-producing countries. This article provides an overview of the price movements, starting from an average of $111 per barrel in 2011, declining to lows of negative prices in 2020, and recovering to around $66 per barrel in 2021. The complexities of the global oil market are

Get the latest insights on price movement and trend analysis of Crude Oil in different regions across the world (Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East Africa).

The first quarter of 2025 for Crude Oil prices in the North American region experienced a decline followed by an uptrend. In January 2025 oil prices maintained an upward trajectory.

In June 2025, the price of Merey crude oil – Venezuela’s reference export blend – averaged ***** U.S. dollars per barrel, down from ***** U.S. dollars per barrel the previous month. Merey crude oil has been part of the OPEC basket since January 2009. A blend of extra-heavy crude oil from the Orinoco belt and lighter grades, Venezuela’s export oil is the heaviest component in the basket, and, in turn, has historically reported the lowest average price in the OPEC basket. The 2020's oil crisis Crude oil prices worldwide dropped dramatically in the first months of 2020, the result of an unprecedented decline in demand as lockdown measures were implemented globally in an attempt to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. With storage facilities filling up, WTI crude oil reached a record negative price in the third week of April. Since then, prices have seen a mostly continual recovery. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022, prices surged to levels last seen in 2008, with reference oil blends Brent, WTI, and OPEC basket averaging at more than *** U.S. dollars per barrel in summer 2022. Venezuela’s struggling oil sector The global decline in prices brought upon by the pandemic was only the most recent blow to the South American country's oil industry. Despite holding the largest proved oil reserves in the world, Venezuela’s oil production has declined notably. In 2023, it averaged around ******* barrels per day, a third of the level registered a decade earlier. A political and economic crisis as well as resulting U.S. sanctions have led to a rise in oil stocks in the country, affecting both prices and production.

Despite their widespread use as predictors of the spot price of oil, oil futures prices tend to be less accurate in the mean-squared prediction error sense than no-change forecasts. This result is driven by the variability of the futures price about the spot price, as captured by the oil futures spread. This variability can be explained by the marginal convenience yield of oil inventories. Using a two-country, multi-period general equilibrium model of the spot and futures markets for crude oil we show that increased uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls under plausible assumptions causes the spread to decline. Increased uncertainty also causes precautionary demand for oil to increase, resulting in an immediate increase in the real spot price. Thus the negative of the oil futures spread may be viewed as an indicator of fluctuations in the price of crude oil driven by precautionary demand. An empirical analysis of this indicator provides evidence of how shifts in the uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls affect the real spot price of crude oil.

Stocks of crude oil in the United States increased by 7.07million barrels in the week ending July 4 of 2025. This dataset provides the latest reported value for - United States Crude Oil Stocks Change - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news.

Oil shocks exert influence on macroeconomic activity through various channels, many of which imply a symmetric effect. However, the effect can also be asymmetric. In particular, sharp oil price changes "either increases or decreases" may reduce aggregate output temporarily because they delay business investment by raising uncertainty or induce costly sectoral resource reallocation. Consistent with these asymmetric-effect hypotheses, the authors find that a volatility measure constructed using daily crude oil futures prices has a negative and significant effect on future gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the period 1984-2004. Moreover, the effect becomes more significant after oil price changes are also included in the regression to control for the symmetric effect. The evidence here provides economic rationales for Hamilton's (2003) nonlinear oil shock measure: It captures overall effects, both symmetric and asymmetric, of oil price shocks on output.

We study the effects of releases from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) within the context of fully specified models of the global oil market that explicitly allow for storage demand as well as unanticipated changes in the SPR. We show that historically SPR policy interventions, defined as sequences of exogenous SPR shocks during selected periods, have helped stabilize the price of oil. Their effect on the price of oil, however, has been modest. For example, the cumulative effect of the SPR releases after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was a reduction of $2 per barrel in the real price of oil after 7 months. Whereas emergency drawdowns tend to lower the real price of oil, we find that exchanges tend to raise the real price of oil in the long run. We also provide a detailed analysis of the benefits of the 2018 White House proposal to sell off half of the SPR within the next decade. We show that the expected fiscal benefits of this plan are somewhat higher than the revenue of $16.6 billion dollars projected by the White House.

The prediction performance of the HAR model based on the Top method segmentation for crude oil futures volatility with/without ICS at different time intervals.

Urals Oil rose to 66.46 USD/Bbl on July 11, 2025, up 2.31% from the previous day. Over the past month, Urals Oil's price has risen 2.96%, but it is still 18.42% lower than a year ago, according to trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks the benchmark market for this commodity. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for Urals Crude.

Some analysts and economists recently warned that the United States economy faces a much higher risk of recession should the price of oil rise to $100 per barrel or more. In February 2008, spot crude oil prices closed above $100 per barrel for the first time ever, and since then they have climbed even higher. Meanwhile, according to some surveys of economists, it is highly probable that a recession began in the United States in late 2007 or early 2008. Although the findings in this paper are consistent with the view that the United States economy has become much less sensitive to large changes in oil prices, a simple forecasting exercise using Hamilton's model augmented with the first principal component of 85 macroeconomic variables reveals that a permanent increase in the price of crude oil to $150 per barrel by the end of 2008 could have a significant negative effect on the growth rate of real gross domestic product in the short run. Moreover, the model also predicts that such an increase in oil prices would produce much higher overall and core inflation rates in 2009 than most policymakers expect.

The Arctic marine environment is facing increasing risks of oil spills due to growing maritime activities such as tourism and resource exploration. Entrainment and migration of oil through the sea ice brine channel system may pose a considerable risk to the biota that rely on the ice for food and shelter. These ice-associated biological communities are the base of an Arctic food chain that supports a hugely productive community of polar bears, birds, walruses, whales, and ultimately humans. Mesocosms were used to investigate the possible impacts of oil, allowing for the careful growth of artificial sea ice that would be reflective of natural sea ice. These mesocosms were inoculated with biological cultures collected from landfast sea ice near Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), AK. Environmentally-similar ice conditions were established in the tanks to evaluate the impact of Alaska North Slope crude oil on transplanted sea ice biota using two different oiling scenarios: discrete oil lenses and dispersed emulsions. North Slope crude oil penetrated farther into overlying sea ice than observed in previous experiments (NORCOR, 1975, Glaeser and Vance, 1972, Dickens 2011). The presence of oil resulted in notable negative impacts on the biological community, with complete inhibition of ice algal growth. These findings suggest that an oil spill in ice-covered waters could have substantial and lasting negative impacts on the microorganisms at the base of this critical Arctic food chain.

Louisiana crude oil was added to salt water (34 ppt) along with additions of dispersant (Corexit 9500A) and/or granular materials (limestone or quartz). For each treatment, there was a specific order of addition for each component. Treatments included oil only, oil then dispersant, oil then dispersant then sediment, sediment then oil then dispersant, oil then sediment then dispersant, and oil then sediment. This dataset reports the ratios of oil concentration found floating, captured by sediments, and dispersed in water after each treatment.

This dataset includes the semi-quantitative direct infusion data generated with a Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) with electrospray ionization negative mode (ESI(-)) from an experiment on marine microbial degradation of water-soluble polar crude oil components. Crude oil-derived polar compounds are receiving increasing attention due to their higher proportion in weathered oil, higher water solubility and potential harmful environmental impacts. However, these compounds are not amenable to GC-based analytical methods. Current knowledge on the characteristics and weathering patterns of oil-derived polar compounds relies on Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS). Natural marine bacteria consortia were exposed to crude oil-derived compounds dissolved in seawater in a lab incubation study. Three sets of controls were used: (1) sterile seawater with oil-derived water-soluble compounds; (2) sterile seawater with natural marine bacteria and succinic acid, which was used as a simple carbon source instead of crude oil; and (3) seawater alone with natural marine bacteria. All incubation sets were supplemented with nutrients and kept in dark at room temperature for 14 days. This dataset includes semi-quantitative FT-ICR-MS direct infusion data, which focused on the molecular level chemical composition of the incubation media.