Basics 3 of 7 · Oil and gas industry basics
The price cycle
Oil at $100 is a harder market to sell into than oil at $50, and the show says why.
Every seller knows a downturn is hard. The show's observation that surprises people is about the top of the cycle.
“when you're $100 a barrel of oil, it's even harder to sell because they're too busy and they're printing money and they don't want to buy anything else”
Source: Selling into Oil Patch: The RevOps Playbook, episode 78 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.
A buyer who is making plenty of money has no problem for you to solve and no time to hear about one. A buyer whose budget was just cut has the time, and if what you sell takes cost out, has the problem. Neither moment is good or bad on its own. The mistake is pitching the same way in both.
WTI, annual average, 2008 to 2025
Show the values as a table
| Year | WTI, dollars a barrel |
|---|---|
| 2008 | $99.67 |
| 2009 | $61.95 |
| 2010 | $79.48 |
| 2011 | $94.88 |
| 2012 | $94.05 |
| 2013 | $97.98 |
| 2014 | $93.17 |
| 2015 | $48.66 |
| 2016 | $43.29 |
| 2017 | $50.80 |
| 2018 | $65.23 |
| 2019 | $56.99 |
| 2020 | $39.16 |
| 2021 | $68.13 |
| 2022 | $94.90 |
| 2023 | $77.58 |
| 2024 | $76.63 |
| 2025 | $65.39 |
Annual averages of the Cushing, OK spot price, dollars per barrel, from the EIA release of 2026-10-21.
Public data: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Cushing, OK WTI Spot Price FOB, annual average, dollars per barrel (release 2026-10-21). Read 2026-10-24.
The cycle also moves the three segments differently, and the show spells it out. When crude is high, upstream has money everywhere and downstream is squeezed, because its raw feedstock is expensive. When crude falls, upstream budgets get cut and downstream booms. Pipelines sit in the middle and mostly keep going. If you sell to all three, you are never fully in a boom or a bust; you are always selling into one segment that is spending and one that is not.
Who is spending when crude moves
| When crude is high | When crude is low | |
|---|---|---|
| Upstream | Booming; there is money everywhere | Budgets cut, and probably layoffs |
| Midstream | Doing OK | Pipeline will still be OK |
| Downstream | Squeezed; its raw feedstock is expensive | Booms, because its feedstock got cheaper |
The words
- WTI
- West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark crude price, quoted in dollars per barrel at Cushing, Oklahoma. When someone in Houston says "the price", this is the number.
- Boom and bust
- The industry's own name for its cycle. Prices set budgets, budgets set headcount, and both can halve inside a year.
- Takeaway capacity
- Pipeline room to move production out of a basin. When a basin produces more than its pipes can carry, midstream spends while upstream prices get discounted.
- Feedstock
- The crude or gas a refinery or chemical plant buys to make products. Downstream's cost is upstream's revenue, so the two segments boom at opposite ends of the cycle.
More from the show
The episode was recorded in August 2026 and names the segment that was spending at the time. The point is the mechanism, not the date: the pendulum swings, and a seller has to know which way.
“you got to remember, we're in a commodities market. So budget cycles swing. Some parts of this industry, like right now, the upstream side of this industry is booming.”
Source: Breaking into Oil and Gas, a Five Step Process, episode 100 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.
The cycle also explains something about the people you will be calling. Layoffs in a bust are not a rumour here; they are how the industry has always managed cost, and the show names the price it pays for that.
“when they go through these cycles they lose really skilled people and it takes a long time to get somebody trained back up when you need them again”
Source: You Can’t Automate Passion: Engineering People, episode 76 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.
And the people who stayed through the last bust remember it. That memory is in the room when a buyer looks at a new vendor.
“There's nothing like an oil bust that'll create a scarcity mindset. I remember the day that oil went negative.”
Source: Selling into Oil Patch: The RevOps Playbook, episode 78 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.
The same swing, filmed during the 2015 bust
Before the next call
What was WTI a year ago and what is it today, and which segment is this buyer in?
