Have Mars and Light Louisiana Sweet crudes become marginalized after failing to rise with a wide Brent-WTI spread?

In the past week, with the ICE Brent-NYMEX WTI spread blowing out—it was at parity briefly a few weeks ago, and now it’s out to more than $11–US Gulf Coast crudes Mars and LLS’s differentials failed to rise in tandem. In the past, whenever the Brent-WTI spread widened, Mars and LLS differentials to WTI would rise, in essence, keeping those two grades more in line with Brent.

Since the beginning of October, the Brent-WTI spread has widened from about $5.90/b with a peak gap of $11.65/b October 22 before retracing back to $10.81/b October 28.

Mars on Monday was at WTI minus $3.20/b while LLS was at WTI plus $2.10/b, Platts data showed. When the Brent-WTI spread was $11.68/b in April—not that far from where it is now– Mars was trading at $8.95/b more than WTI and LLS was plus $14.40/b, according to Platts data.

via Mars and LLS, key Gulf crude oil grades, can’t keep up « The Barrel Blog.