Are regulators right to worry about the oil benchmarks?
The three most widely used crude oil benchmarks are North Sea Brent, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) from the USA, and Oman crude from the Middle East. As is well known, the bulk of the 92 million barrels of crude oil sold each day is priced based on published assessments or daily averages of deals do...
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
2015
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| Summary: | The three most widely used crude oil benchmarks are North Sea Brent, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) from the USA, and Oman crude from the Middle East. As is well known, the bulk of the 92 million barrels of crude oil sold each day is priced based on published assessments or daily averages of deals done in these three grades of oil, known as benchmarks. The assessed value of physical or ‘dated’ Brent published by Platts, a leading price-reporting agency (PRA), is the most widely used benchmark. Billions of dollars worth of oil and signifi cant volumes of gas and LNG change hands each day based on Platts’ dated Brent assessment. Other benchmarks published by companies such as Petroleum Argus and ICIS are also used by the industry. |
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