Just saw this article with charts of RBOB vs. WTI and RBOB vs. Brent. I was surprised that Gasoline follows Brent more closely than our own WTI. Probably a good reason for this that veteran energy traders understand. Please enlighten me. http://seekingalpha.com/article/293394-gasoline-and-the-brent-wti-spread
Actually, RBOB gasoline has the highest statistical correlation to the S&P 500 as compared to any other product in the Nymex or ICE complex. Seriously.
I've notices the same. Heating oil has also been moving more correlated with Brent than WTI. Sorry, don't have an explanation for you... although I could always speculate. Perhaps transporting refined products is easier than raw crude? And of course refineries are often built for specific flavors of crude... so supply is not truly fungible. So perhaps refined HO and RB could be exported to Europe/Asia, maintaining a more fixed global market?
Just digging a little more, I learned that the majority of US refineries use Brent crude, perhaps because they are located near the coast so the choice of Brent vs WTI is driven largely by distribution access. Learn something new every day ...
For the time being, $WTIC remains an irrelevant benchmark when considering the prices of oil derivatives, such as gasoline. This is largely due to delivery problems at Cushing, Oklahoma. For more information on this problem, just do an Internet search using some of these word combinations: WTI Cushing delivery problems WTI Cushing pipeline problems why is wti cheaper than brent One article that may explain things in further detail (if you really need an explanation) is http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/19/why-are-wti-and-brent-prices-so-different/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cushing,_Oklahoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Run_of_1891 They turned a town that was established because of horse races to a town for oil exports... Not really a great transition from one to the other.