holds investments, and seeks to manage risks in operating its facilities and businesses. The longer-term trend in earnings for the upstream segment is also a function of other factors, including the company’s ability to find or acquire and efficiently produce crude oil and natural gas, changes in fiscal terms of contracts, and changes in tax laws and regulations.

The company continues to actively manage its schedule of work, contracting, procurement and supply-chain activities to effectively manage costs. However, price levels for capital and exploratory costs and operating expenses associated with the production of crude oil and natural gas can be subject to external factors beyond the company’s control including, among other things, the general level of inflation, commodity prices and prices charged by the industry’s material and service providers, which can be affected by the volatility of the industry’s own supply-and-demand conditions for such materials and services. In recent years, Chevron and the oil and gas industry generally experienced an increase in certain costs that exceeded the general trend of inflation in many areas of the world. As a result of the decline in prices of crude oil and other commodities since mid-2014, these cost pressures have softened. Capital and exploratory expenditures and operating expenses can also be affected by damage to production facilities caused by severe weather or civil unrest, delays in construction, or other factors.

The chart above shows the trend in benchmark prices for Brent crude oil, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil and U.S. Henry Hub natural gas. The Brent price averaged $52 per barrel for the full-year 2015, compared to $99 in 2014. As of mid-February 2016, the Brent price was $31 per barrel. The majority of the company’s equity crude production is priced based on the Brent benchmark. Prices firmed in the first half of 2015, but declined in the remainder of the year amid persistently high global crude oil inventories and production.

The WTI price averaged $49 per barrel for the full-year 2015, compared to $93 in 2014. As of mid-February 2016, the WTI price was $29 per barrel. WTI traded at a discount to Brent throughout 2015 due to high inventories and excess crude supply in the U.S. market. With the lifting of the U.S. crude oil export ban in December 2015, the spread between WTI and Brent narrowed substantially and WTI traded around parity into February 2016.

A differential in crude oil prices exists between high-quality (high-gravity, low-sulfur) crudes and those of lower quality (low-gravity, high-sulfur). The amount of the differential in any period is associated with the relative supply/demand balances for each crude type, which are functions of the capacity of refineries that are able to process each as feedstock into high-value light products (motor gasoline, jet fuel, aviation gasoline and diesel fuel). In second-half 2015, the differential expanded in North America as Canadian heavy crude production recovered from earlier planned and unplanned outages, while light sweet crude prices in the U.S. were supported by reductions in the rig count and slowing domestic