EQNR Equinor ASA

By Sarah McFarlane

LONDON--The North Sea oil grades that underpin the global Brent crude price benchmark have been expanded to address the region's declining production, price reporting agency S&P Global Platts announced Monday.

Oil from the Troll field in the Norwegian part of the North Sea will be added to the basket of crude used to calculate the benchmark from 2018, Platts said.

The Brent crude price, based on four physical oil streams extracted from fields in the North Sea, is what the majority of the world's physical crude is priced off.

The existing basket used to set the price includes Brent Ninian Blend, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk. The addition of Troll, a field operated by Norway's Statoil ASA (STO), should increase deliverable supplies by around 20%. It will also mean Statoil overtakes Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA.LN) as the most dominant producer of the streams used to calculate the Brent price.

North Sea oil production has been slowly declining since 2000 which is problematic because a robust volume of oil is needed to underpin a benchmark. Platts has addressed this by repeatedly adding to the grades used to calculate the price.

Write to Sarah McFarlane at Sarah.McFarlane@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 20, 2017 10:17 ET (15:17 GMT)

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