For oil investors, this is both the best of times and the worst of times, depending on which crude benchmark you trade.
While money managers pile up on bets that Brent futures will rise as supplies from Iran shrink, even Hurricane Florence wasn’t enough to get investors excited in the U.S. Bullish wagers on West Texas Intermediate fell for the eighth time in 10 weeks, and its discount to Brent is near the biggest gap in more than three years. The two markets are drifting apart as a pipeline crunch in the Permian Basin erodes profits for shale explorers.