Investors rushed to lock in oil prices at record levels in January amid concerns around Iranian crude supplies and more Venezuelan barrels heading to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Hedging can help producers reduce risk and protect their production from sharp moves in the market by locking in a price for the oil. It can also give traders opportunities to profit in times of volatility. Investors traded a record number of WTI Midland at Houston contracts, a price benchmark for exported U.S. crude, with 1.9 million contracts trading on the Intercontinental Exchange last month, exchange data shows.
Traders also set a daily record for WTI Midland at Houston on the ICE, trading 257,569 contracts on January 30, 2026, when U.S. crude futures were hovering around a six-month high on tensions between Washington and Tehran.
U.S. crude futures closed at around $65 a barrel on January 30, up about 14% from the first trading day of the year.
Iranian geopolitical tensions have influenced risk premiums in the oil market while severe winter weather in the U.S. hit production and refinery dynamics, according to Jeff Barbuto, senior vice president of global oil markets at ICE. The winter storm knocked off as much as 2 million bpd of crude output at its peak late last month, analysts estimated.
Meanwhile, traders moved a record 188,000 contracts for ICE Houston Western Canadian Select futures.
“The return of Venezuelan crude has created potential new competition for Canadian oil on the U.S. Gulf Coast and in other export markets, including China,” said Barbuto. The WCS benchmark price recorded a single-day volume record of 19,965 lots on January 6, the day Caracas and Washington reached a deal to export up to $2 billion worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States, prompting concerns those South American barrels would displace Canadian barrels at the Gulf Coast.
(Reporting by Georgina McCartney in Houston; Editing by Sonali Paul)