Oil Drilling - Pricing Strategies - part 6 Imported Refiner Acquisition Cost

The Imported Refiner Acquisition Cost (IRAC) is a volume-weighted average price of all crude Oils imported into the United States over a specified period. Because the United States imports more types of crude oil than any other country, it may represent the truest “world oil price” among all published crude oil prices. The IRAC is also usually similar to the OPEC Basket price, so it too is typically about $2 per barrel less than the WTI spot price and about $1 per barrel less than the Brent price. However, because the IRAC is not reported by EIA until nearly 2 months after the end of the month in question, i.e., the August IRAC average price would be reported sometime in late October, the IRAC is not a particularly timely measure of a “world oil price”. Although EIA is generally the only organization that uses the IRAC, it is used by EIA as the “world oil price” in all of its forecast publications, including the Short-Term Energy Outlook, released monthly, as well as the Annual Energy Outlook and International Energy Outlook, both of which are released annually and provide an annual forecast looking out approximately 20 years in the future.

1Energy Intelligence Group, The International Crude Oil Market Handbook, 2001-2002 (October 2001), pp. E1, E289 and E315.