mate, i have mates who are at big brokers and no one can feel why the spread has blown out... strict supply and demand in the delivery area mate. the bfo market is very important. but it is a small market. when things get tight close to expiry, sometimes refiners have nowhere else to turn. got to remember that suppliers and refiners are often in the same boat. if bp lifts some oil off the bottom of the north sea, they must find a home for it. it is so very expensive to shut production in that they will sell it below production cost - for years if necessary - rather than cap the wellhead. refiners are the mirror image. if they need material to maintain a stream, they will pay almost any price to get it. shutting down is very dangerous and very expensive.... even then that is a general opinion of someone who over looks me and even he doesnt know exactly.... a physical player will always smash it no matter what the price... hope that helps.....
volume and liquidity have died on qm since it begun the big drop from 70; when we got to 55 traders migrated to other contracts. same thing happened with gold [yg/zg]; once traders and investors healed from the bug volumes dropped like a stone and never recoverd. bull mkts attract most of the interests...at least this is the pattern i noticed.
the only reason why QM was created was so that spec/punters who wouldnt pay a lot to get access (nymex out of hours platform) in my opinion... it is a shit contract, there was no arb between the 2 contracts, QM and CL so everyone in the right frame of mind switched very quickly. any one starting out, trade CL or ICE WTI