eli5: is the price of crude oil i see on the futures market the same as the actual price refiners are paying?
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The crude oil prices in the futures market is for a specific quality of oil delivered at a specific location at a point in time. There is virtually nobody who actually gets this, most of them is anyway based of obsolete oil fields which have been depleated. The actual oil being traded is of different quality which affects the price and there are costs of transport and storage of the oil for the final delivery. But the market price is used as an index for what the price is actually going to be. So the refinery might show up to an oil producer with a futures contract that is expiring and the producer may charge more because their oil is of higher quality but then reduce the cost because they want it delivered closer to the oil field then the futures contract say.
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