If I invested in WTI crude oil in 2008
$10,000 in Crude oil (WTI) in Jan 2008 would be worth $10,505 by Oct 2026 (1.05×, 0.3% a year).
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (CC BY 4.0); inflation: BLS CPI-U. Historical illustration, not financial advice; ignores fees, storage and taxes. Details
Why this start year
January 2008 was just before a historic swing in crude oil. West Texas Intermediate’s World Bank monthly average ran up sharply later that year and then collapsed in the financial crisis. This page is a spot-price thought experiment, not a rolled oil futures contract or an oil ETF.
That distinction matters here more than on a quiet commodity page: a real oil investment in 2008 would have been dominated by futures rolls, storage, or equity risk, none of which appear in a monthly spot average. The calculator still answers a clean question — what a notional barrel quantity bought at the January 2008 average would be worth at the latest average — and we report the computed result only.
West Texas Intermediate crude, a US benchmark, as a World Bank monthly average in dollars per barrel. This is a spot-price series, not a rolled futures or oil-ETF return.
Frequently asked questions
How much would $10,000 in Crude oil (WTI) in 2008 be worth now?
About $10,505 as of Oct 2026 (1.05×, 0.3% CAGR), using the official series cited below.
What about $1,000 instead of $10,000?
About $1,051 as of Oct 2026. For a lump sum with no contributions, the multiple is the same (1.05×).
How much of that is inflation?
In Jan 2008 dollars the ending value is about $6,581 (0.66× after CPI-U). Consumer prices rose 1.60× over the span.
Sources & caveats
Not financial advice. This is a historical thought experiment, not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Figures use monthly average spot prices from the World Bank Pink Sheet. They are not the return of a particular ETF, futures contract, mining stock, coin, bar, or brokerage account. They ignore transaction costs, storage, insurance, roll yield on futures, taxes, and slippage. A real investment would have returned something different.
- Source: World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet). Accessed via the World Bank. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 and the World Bank Dataset Terms.
- License and terms: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), subject to the World Bank Dataset Terms
- Series window used here: Jan 2008 through Oct 2026.