This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Platts Dated Brent | |
|---|---|
| Name | Platts Dated Brent |
| Type | Oil price benchmark |
| Owner | S&P Global Platts |
| Region | North Sea, West Africa, Global |
| Introduced | mid-1980s (development) |
| Currency | US dollar per barrel |
Platts Dated Brent
Platts Dated Brent is a benchmark crude oil price assessment used by energy traders, commodity exchanges, refiners, and shipping firms to value physical cargoes and derivative contracts. The assessment influences transactions among major producers and traders such as Shell plc, BP plc, TotalEnergies SE, Equinor ASA, and ENI S.p.A., and is referenced by financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank AG, and JPMorgan Chase & Co..
Platts Dated Brent functions as a spot-market assessment linking physical cargoes from the Brent oilfield, Forties oilfield, Oseberg oilfield, Ekofisk oilfield, and Troll oilfield with derivatives traded on venues such as the Intercontinental Exchange, the London Metal Exchange, and the New York Mercantile Exchange. Market participants including Vitol Group, Glencore plc, Trafigura Group, Gunvor Group, and Mitsui & Co., Ltd. use the assessment alongside other benchmarks like West Texas Intermediate, Dubai Crude, Oman Crude, Urals oil, and Bonny Light to settle contracts between buyers such as ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, PetroChina, and Rosneft Oil Company.
Platts assesses Dated Brent by collecting transactional information from traders, brokers, shipping sources, and producers including Svenska Petroleum Exploration AB, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, and ConocoPhillips. The process incorporates nominations, fixture reports, and exchanges of offers among intermediaries such as Argus Media, ICIS, Bloomberg L.P., and Reuters. Assessors reconcile inputs to produce a time-stamped price used in pricing formulas for swaps, forwards, and term contracts with counterparties like BP Shipping, Shell Trading, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., and Pemex. Shipping and storage dynamics involving firms such as Teekay Shipping Corporation, Frontline Ltd., Euronav NV, and infrastructure at hubs including Sullom Voe Terminal, Coryton Refinery, Flotta Oil Terminal, and Kirkwall also inform the market signal underpinning the assessment.
Dated Brent underpins pricing for North Sea output and serves as a reference for maritime cargoes from regions including West Africa, North Sea Basin, and imports to Northwest Europe, Mediterranean Sea, and Asia-Pacific. It is embedded in commercial agreements spanning national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, QatarEnergy, and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and international traders and refiners like Petrobras, Valero Energy Corporation, Phillips 66, and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited. The assessment influences risk management strategies at hedge funds and asset managers such as Bridgewater Associates, BlackRock, Inc., The Carlyle Group, and PIMCO and is referenced in reports by intergovernmental institutions including the International Energy Agency, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the World Bank.
The benchmark evolved from oil trading practices in the North Sea during the 1970s and 1980s amid activity by majors like Occidental Petroleum, Amerada Hess Corporation, and Texaco. As seaborne crude markets matured, price discovery centralized through market information providers and brokerage houses including Louis Dreyfus Company, Cargill, ADM, and Phibro. Regulatory and market events—such as reforms influenced by bodies like the European Commission, the UK Financial Conduct Authority, and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission—and geopolitical shocks involving Iran–Iraq War, Gulf War (1990–1991), Iraq War, and Libya Crisis (2011) reshaped flows that feed the assessment. Technological and commercial developments from firms like Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, and Transocean affected production profiles that in turn altered the composition of cargoes used in the assessment.
Critics from trade associations and think tanks such as International Association of Oil & Gas Producers, Chatham House, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Brookings Institution argue the assessment can reflect thin liquidity, regional imbalances, and concentration among major traders like Vitol Group and Trafigura Group, and can be sensitive to reporting practices by price-reporting agencies including S&P Global Platts and Argus Media. Academics at institutions such as London School of Economics, University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University have examined susceptibility to manipulation, information asymmetry, and basis risk versus alternative benchmarks like Brent Crude Oil Futures and WTI Midland. Operational limits include reliance on spot fixtures, tanker availability issues around Strait of Hormuz and English Channel, and storage constraints at terminals like Rothesay and Isle of Grain.
Adoption spans commodity traders, refiners, shipping companies, and financial counterparties governed by regulators including the UK Financial Conduct Authority, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, European Securities and Markets Authority, and national ministries of energy such as Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (India). Industry contracts by organizations including the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Energy Markets Association, and trading platforms like CME Group incorporate the assessment into price formulas, settlement clauses, and risk management frameworks used by corporations such as INEOS, SABIC, Repsol, and Concho Resources.
Category:Oil price benchmarks