Platts Expands Oil Grades for North Sea Benchmark Price
February 20 2017 - 10:32AM
Dow Jones News
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)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Shell (LSE:SHEL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Shell (LSE:SHEL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024