Dated Brent Crude Oil Benchmark Price

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ICE Brent Index

The ICE Brent is recognised as a commodity benchmark under the EU Benchmarks Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 of 8 June 2016).

The ICE Brent Index represents the average price of trading in the prevailing North Sea ‘cash’ or forward market in the relevant delivery month as reported and confirmed by industry media. Only published full cargo size (currently 600,000 barrels) trades and assessments are taken into consideration in the calculation. The ICE Brent Index is published by ICE Futures Europe on the day after expiry of the front month ICE Brent futures contract and used by the Exchange as the final cash settlement price.

DATED Brent crude definition

iIn the 1970s, Shell named all of its U.K. oil fields alphabetically, after water birds, in order of discovery. Brent is an oil field named after a species of goose.

Dated Brent crude – also referred to as Brent blend – is one of three major oil benchmarks (prce data) used by those trading oil contracts, futures and derivatives. The other two major benchmarks are West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Dubai/Oman, though there are many smaller oil varieties traded as well.

The Brent crude is a basket of North Sea crude oil streams, which includes Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, and Troll (BFOET).

DATED BRENT CRUDE is the benchmark against which the majority of the 100m barrels of crude oil traded every day are priced. The black stuff that makes up the Brent benchmark comprises a tiny fraction of the world’s extracted oil, but it is used to determine the value of some 60% of oil on international markets.

Crude oil History Price

Dated Brent Crude Oil – 10 Year Daily Chart

Daily chart of Dated Brent (Europe) crude oil prices over the last ten years. Values shown are daily closing prices. Source: macrotrends

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What is the Dated Brent Index?

Price reporting agency’s offer the most widely traded index for physical Brent trading — Argus Media being one and the market refers to as the “monopoly”.

The two leading providers assess the markets slightly differently. One takes a weighted average while the other concentrates all trading activity around a short “window” to see the price at a specific point (4.30pm UK).

Physical Brent trading is focused around two prices: Dated Brent (short-term contracts for delivery between 10 days and one month) and forward Brent (longer-term contracts between one and four months). These trades are either made on cargoes of 600,000 barrels or on partials of 100,000 barrels.

The futures market, traded on the Intercontinental Exchange ICE, also allows trades in Brent futures for a maximum of 96 consecutive months ahead in units of 1,000 barrels.

May other financial instruments have been developed by exchanges to bridge the gap between the dated and forward markets for risk management.

How did Brent become the benchmark for oil?

The 20th century oil trade was dominated by cartels. Initially international oil companies dominated, with sales between related production and refining divisions. Much of the production became nationalized after the birth of OPEC, with national oil companies imposing controlled prices. Some market diversification occurred with these changes, but it wasn’t until the late 20th century that energy markets started to set prices. The Brent benchmark began to be widely adopted by the market in the mid-1980s, and quickly emerged as the leading crude oil benchmark. Today, most crude oil traded globally is directly or indirectly priced on Brent with thousands of other indexes created as derivatives for the rest of the oil and petrochemical markets. The price that the market adopted and created is now a very soar subject for purchasers of oil data as the dominant producers have become so entrenched in the contract pricing.

oil price reporting agency’s bring great value to the price of dated brent,

but at what cost?

If you’re interested in Dated brent, you may be interested in our overview of Arab light, Saharan blend, Bonny light, Basra Light, Iran heavy or the Angolan girassol.