Commodity Price Aggregator — EIA Oil, Gas & USDA Crop Prices

Fetch structured commodity price data from two US federal government APIs: energy prices (crude oil Brent and WTI, petroleum products, natural gas) from the EIA API and agricultural prices (corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton) from the USDA NASS Quick Stats API. No browser automation — both sources are clean REST APIs.

What does the Commodity Price Aggregator do?

The actor queries the EIA (Energy Information Administration) and USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service APIs and returns normalized price records across four commodity categories. Each record carries the source series ID, date, price, unit, frequency, region, and grade — giving you everything needed to join records, pivot on series, or build time-series charts without further cleanup.

EIA data covers daily petroleum spot prices (Brent, WTI, diesel, propane, heating oil), weekly retail gasoline and diesel prices, and monthly natural gas prices. USDA NASS data covers monthly farm-level prices received for corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton.

Note on the agriculture category: If nassApiKey is omitted when commodityCategory includes agriculture, the agriculture fetch is skipped rather than failing the run. Set commodityCategory to energy or natural_gas if you do not have a NASS key.

What data does it extract?

Field	Description
source	Data source: EIA or USDA-NASS
commodity	Commodity name (e.g. UK Brent Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Corn)
market	Market identifier (e.g. EIA-Spot, NASS-Received)
series_id	Source series code (e.g. RBRTE for Brent crude, RCLCO1 for WTI)
series_description	Full series description from the source API
settlement_date	Date of the price record (YYYY-MM-DD for daily/weekly; YYYY-MM for monthly)
price	Price as a decimal number
unit	Price unit (e.g. $/BBL, $/MCF, $/GAL, $/BU)
currency	Currency code (always USD)
frequency	Data frequency: daily, weekly, or monthly
region	Geographic area (e.g. U.S., Los Angeles, Europe)
grade	Commodity grade (Brent, WTI, Gasoline, Diesel, Natural Gas, etc.)
process	Price type (e.g. Spot Price FOB, Price Delivered to Residential)
product_code	Raw product code from the source API

Data coverage

Source	Commodity	Frequency	History
EIA	Petroleum spot prices (Brent, WTI, diesel, propane)	Daily	1986–present
EIA	Retail gasoline and diesel	Weekly	1995–present
EIA	Natural gas (residential, commercial, industrial)	Monthly	1989–present
USDA NASS	Corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton	Monthly	~1900s–present
Not covered	LME metals (copper, aluminum, zinc), CME futures	—	—

How to use it

{
  "commodityCategory": "energy",
  "startDate": "2024-01-01",
  "endDate": "2024-12-31",
  "maxItems": 0
}

Returns all EIA petroleum spot price records for 2024 (Brent and WTI spot prices use series_id RBRTE and RCLCO1 respectively).

{
  "commodityCategory": "agriculture",
  "nassApiKey": "YOUR_NASS_KEY",
  "startDate": "2023-01",
  "maxItems": 0
}

Returns all USDA NASS farm-level prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton from January 2023.

Parameter	Default	Description
commodityCategory	energy	energy, natural_gas, agriculture, or all (energy + natural gas)
eiaApiKey	—	Optional. Free EIA key for higher rate limits. A built-in demo key covers standard volumes. Register at eia.gov/opendata
nassApiKey	—	Required for agriculture. Free key from quickstats.nass.usda.gov/api. Omitting this when commodityCategory includes agriculture causes the agriculture fetch to be skipped
startDate	30 days ago	YYYY-MM-DD for energy; YYYY-MM for natural gas and agriculture
endDate	Today	Latest settlement date to include
maxItems	100	Max records to return. Set to 0 for all available

Use cases

• Trading dashboards — pull Brent (series_id=RBRTE) and WTI (series_id=RCLCO1) daily spot prices and feed them directly into a price display or alert system
• Retail fuel price monitoring — track weekly US gasoline and diesel retail prices by region from the EIA series
• Natural gas market analysis — pull monthly residential, commercial, and industrial natural gas prices by US region
• Agri-fintech applications — feed USDA NASS corn, soybean, and wheat farm-price series into crop revenue models
• Quantitative research — build multi-commodity time-series datasets spanning decades for backtesting or seasonality analysis

FAQ

How do I find the series ID for a specific commodity?

Each record in the output carries a series_id field matching the EIA or NASS source code. For EIA petroleum: Brent crude = RBRTE, WTI crude = RCLCO1, US retail gasoline = EMM_EPM0_PTE_NUS_DPG. Filter the output by series_id to isolate a specific series.

Does the EIA key matter?

The actor includes a built-in demo EIA key that works for standard volumes. If you run into rate limiting on large historical pulls, register your own free key at eia.gov/opendata and pass it as eiaApiKey.

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Results export as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Apify dataset view.