Re: ETE
It depends on where the oil is being drilling. So if you're drilling in the Bakken and you have to ship your oil to Cushing where a customer can be found, then yes, your customer will only pay the WTI price overall and you (the driller) will get WTI pricing less the cost of transportation. If that's $ 10 per barrel, then you get $ 10 less than the listed price.
But if you're drilling in West Texas, where there are adequate pipelines, and you have customers that are more local, the transportation cost will obviously be less, and you (the driller) will get closer to WTI pricing.
Not surprisingly, the difference in price depending on location is called a differential.
Another lesson I learned the hard way - investing in CHKR and not understanding the S-1 warning about differential. CHKR was filled with geographically undesirable wells and the actual amount it received for its natural gas and oil was never anywhere near the listed prices.
And that's oversimplifying. It works on the other side, too, sometimes. Say you're a customer in the middle of somewhere that doesn't have nearby oil wells. And you want to buy some oil. By the time the oil gets to you, you will have paid the listed price plus the cost to transport the oil to you.
So the transportation costs exist in either situation, and the question is who eats the cost. There's more, which others can add.