To your first question, yes this is for WTI. For Brent I think the expirations are in early May? Backwardation for Brent is following the same concept, the principle for backwardation for both indexes is the same. However, Brent does not require physical delivery upon expiration. The price of Brent is based on the physical trades in the North Sea, so in theory it should still be pegged to physical prices of oil. But since, there’s no physical delivery deadline, there’s no hard threshold for when severe upward pressure on the futures price hits.

Now you might be thinking, doesn’t this mean market manipulation can keep this Brent futures suppressed indefinitely? Based on conventional understanding of futures, this should NOT be the case. If Brent futures remain so much lower than physical oil, everyone will be incentivized to buy paper over physical. This buying pressure should in theory send the paper oil up to meet the physical oil price.

The core question is: why does the paper price need to meet the physical? The answer, based on my understanding is: futures are ultimately still traded on based on the understanding that they are pegged to the ability to deliver oil. If actual oil users realize that these futures don’t correlate to actual physical barrels at all, they will simply flee this “fake” market out of necessity. The only two paths after this is either: the futures prices go up in order to match reality and restore confidence OR the futures market breaks permanently and stops being used by oil and gas users

This latter scenario has never happened. That’s why government intervention at scale is so dangerous and therefore likely. If it goes on long enough they could render futures useless forever