STORAGE WOES
The Cushing hub is starting to fill up with oversupplied crude. Since the US cannot export crude, there is no option of unloading WTI onto the world market. This is driving a significant wedge between the price of Brent and the price of WTI. An additional effect of the over-abundance is that storage costs have been going up, from dimes per barrel to dollars per barrel. (According to the WSJ, speculators are still in position to make money from selling stored barrels forward).