Crude Oil Products

The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting, usually by oil tankers and pipelines, and marketing petroleum products. The crude oil products traded on various oil bourses, a commodities exchange where energy commodities such as crude oil and natural gas are traded, based on established chemical profiles, delivery locations, and financial terms. 
The chemical profiles, or crude oil assays, essentially the chemical evaluation of crude oil feedstocks by petroleum testing laboratories, specify important properties like the oil’s American Petroleum Industry (API) gravity, a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water. 
The delivery locations are usually sea ports close to the oil fields from which the crude was obtained, and new fields (oil megaprojects) are constantly being explored, and the pricing is usually quoted based on Free on Board (F.O.B.), an initialism which pertains to the shipping of goods, without consideration of final delivery costs.
The three most quoted oil products are: North America’s West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI), also known as Texas light sweet, a grade of crude oil used as a benchmark in oil pricing; North Sea (a marginal sea of Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium) Brent Crude, a major trading classification of sweet light crude oil comprising Brenty Blend, Forties Blend, Oseberg and Ekofisk crudes (also known as BFOE Quotation); and the UAE (United Arab Emirates, “the Emirates,” a country situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south, as well as sharing sea borders with Qatar to the west and Iran to the north) Dubai Crude, a light sour crude oil extracted from Dubai.
Their pricing is used as a barometer for the entire petroleum industry, although, in total, there are 46 key oil exporting countries. Brent crude is typically priced at about $2 over the WTI Spot price, which is typically priced $5 to $6 dollars above the EIA’s Imported Refinery Acquisition Cost (IRAC) and OPEC Basket prices. WTI and Brent are quoted F.O.B. specific location, not F.O.B. the oilfields. For WTI, the delivery point is Cushing, OK; for Brent, it is Sullom Voe, an island north of Scotland.
Although crude oil assays evaluate various chemical properties of the oil, the two most important properties determining a crude’s value are its density measured as API specific gravity and its sulphur content measure per mass. Crude oil is considered “heavy” if it is high in wax content and does not flow easily, or “light” if low in wax content, has a low density, and flows freely at room temperature: an API gravity of 34 or higher is “light,” between 31-33 is “medium,” and 30 or below is “heavy.” Crude is considered “sweet” if it is low in sulphur content (1.0%/weight), containing the impurity sulfur. Generally, the higher the API gravity (the “lighter” it is), the more valuable the crude.