#crack spread

Optimal Crack Spread Hedging

Video

Introduction

Over the last few years, crude oil prices have dropped from over $100 per barrel to below $40 per barrel. During the same time period, prices of both gasoline and heating oil almost halved. Facing such drastic changes in both input and output prices, oil refineries are presented with challenging risk management…

Executive Summary PBF Energy (PBF) is a bargain at current market prices. PBF’s adept management team, in conjunction with private equity partners, acquired its core refining assets at fire sale prices in 2010 and 2011. Among these assets are the Paulsboro and Delaware City refineries which, following initial turnarounds, are now the crown-jewels of the East Coast (PADD 1) refining system. East…

Crack spread is a term used in the oil industry and futures trading for the differential between the price of crude oil and petroleum products extracted from it - that is, the profit margin that an oil refinery can expect to make by "cracking" crude oil (breaking its long-chain hydrocarbons into useful shorter-chain petroleum products).

In the futures markets, the "crack spread" is a specific spread trade involving simultaneously buying and selling contracts in crude oil and one or more derivative products, typically gasoline and heating oil. Oil refineries may trade a crack spread to hedge the price risk of their operations, while speculators attempt to profit from a change in the oil/gasoline price differential.

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