Unconventional oil and gas: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Shale and tight oil, oil sands and shale gas sell at going crude and gas prices, so revenue follows WTI. Costs depend on drilling and fracking services, sand, steel pipe and how quickly new wells decline.
Proxy WTI crude oil US$/barrel · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for unconventional oil and gas itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkUnconventional oil and gas and Crude oil
Monthly changes 0.94 strong correlation 12-month changes 0.98 strong correlation Last 5 years 0.96 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Unconventional oil and gas ≈ 1.14 × (Crude oil)0.95 R² 0.96 On this fit, a 10% higher crude oil price goes with a 9.5% higher unconventional oil and gas price over the long run. Units: US$/barrel and $/bbl.Chart: Unconventional oil and gas and Crude oil prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Unconventional oil and gas price against Crude oil price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Shale barrels are light crude sold against WTI, which tracks Brent closely through seaborne trade. The WTI proxy and Brent move almost together: monthly changes correlate at 0.94 and yearly changes at 0.98. Gaps open only when US pipeline or export capacity runs short.
strong co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsShale wells, especially in wet gas plays, yield large volumes of natural gas liquids, and the shale boom made the US the main propane exporter. Propane rises and falls with oil, with monthly moves correlating at 0.60 and yearly moves at 0.81, though storage gluts can drag it lower.
moderate co-movement month to month · 248 months Show chartsShale gas and gas from oil wells flow from the same drilling. The site's gas series is the European price, which is set by pipeline and LNG supply rather than US shale, so monthly moves correlate only at 0.13 and yearly moves at 0.59.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsRefiners buy shale crude and price their products off the same crude markets, so the refinery products index follows WTI, correlating at 0.77 for monthly changes and 0.94 for yearly changes. Swings in the margin between crude and products explain the remaining gap.
strong co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsHydraulic fracturing pumps large tonnages of sand into each well to prop fractures open. Demand for frac sand rises and falls with the number of wells completed, which itself responds to oil prices with a lag of several months.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Fracking fluids use friction reducers, gelling agents, biocides and scale inhibitors. Spending on these chemicals scales with drilling and completion activity, so their sales follow rig counts and oil prices rather than setting them.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.