The Officials

The buyside remains on the sidelines in the North Sea while the physical differential continues rising through the rolling up of the contango structure.

The Officials Brent Index is in!
The Indonesian regulatory authorities, as per the attached document, have approved the Jakarta Futures Exchange’s request to launch a futures rolling contract settling on The Officials Brent Index (OBI). The contract is designed to serve the needs of both professionals trading large lot sizes as well as smaller investors trading smaller lots. The contract reflects a rolling contract which rolls on the day before the normal expiration of the Brent contract. The contract is launched on 1st of October, 2025.
Please see the official attachment in Bahasa Indonesia, but dear reader, a translation to your own language is now super easy on the web.

How many phone a friend chances does Donald get? Another phone call with Xi was supposed to be groundbreaking but all we discerned from it was more vague platitudes about having an important relationship and requests not to make unilateral trade decisions. Boring!

The Dubai mega battle continues and the ebb and flow have not been favouring the shorts! Mercuria has been the headline seller of UZ, trying to pummel that baby down. But the first two weeks of trading were unkind to the fast and furious with Vitol and the Chinese having the upper hand. But Mercuria reloaded and has more lives than a cat. As Mercuria sold, the physical premium plunged 36c to $2.64, the lowest in September trading! It’s only the second day it’s been below $3, after Wednesday’s dip to $2.98. But it looks like too little, too late… for Mercuria. “They hurting”, said a trading source!

Trump is annoyed Putin isn’t playing ball in negotiations. Low prices will force him to the table, Trump says! But if Russia’s supplies are removed then prices run up, don’t they? He’s also angry with countries buying Russian oil – but he hasn’t put 2 and 2 together to realise if they stop, they will buy WTI and angry consumers would suffer from higher prices. But the market was resolutely indifferent to Trump’s rantings, as Brent even dropped through the window to hit $67.52/bbl by the close.

Yesterday, $68 looked like a floor until the evening, but in late trading it began to look like a new ceiling. Although Brent surged through the window, it couldn’t quite breach the $68 level again, reaching the close at $67.86/bbl. Despite the flat price decline, the prompt spread has been zooming upwards! It’s even broken the 50c barrier for the first time since 3 September! You know what that means – there is demand for crude right now. The stars are aligning for the eventual pop!

Forties is finally heading to Asia! About time, since the Forties curve is very depressed. However, we’ve not seen any bids or offers for the grade since September 11 and the value is gradually rolling up the contango curve. Freight has been keeping a lid on things but finally buyers stepped in guess what happened? “Freight markets are going crazy” in the words of a trader. You need to be a multimillionaire to secure a ship!

The market likes gossip and is often happier to react to rumour than official communique. Transneft denied the idea Russia will cut back on oil production due to Ukrainian drone attacks but the market remains comfortably above $68 this morning… It’s “fake news!” but the price tells the ultimate truth.

The market was on fire on the rumours of cutting Russian production, facing the onslaught of Ukrainian drones hitting infrastructure! Brent flat price surged from barely holding its head above the $67 line in the morning to a monumental $68.32/bbl by the European close! Although flat price was booming to its highest since 2 September, the prompt spread lagged and struggled to rise in unison. It did manage to rise to 44c by the close, however, it was just up 3c from yesterday.

Volumes continue rising but remain down on a yearly basis!

China’s third batch of clean product export quotas came out and holy mama! Total volume for clean fuel exports (gasoline, gasoil and kerosene) is said to be xxxx million mt, more or less aligned with the market’s expectations. On the clean product front, Sinopec’s quota was 3 million mt, while PetroChina got 3.05 million mt.

Shouting doesn’t stop wars… No matter how red the orange hue turns, the Russians and Ukrainians continue to drop bombshells on each other. The latest on Ukraine’s hit list is now the Kirishi refinery, which will reportedly take 2 months to fix! Talking of refinery outages, Pernis isn’t the only one out going action in NWE, as IIR confirmed that Total’s Antwerp refinery is reaching the end of its sequential shutdown, with numerous units now offline. These refinery disruptions are hitting the crude market hard, seriously denting demand and hurting Dated Brent.

Tariffs! Again. The umpteenth round had the market opening higher today, rising 40c from Friday’s close. Trump’s gone cold on Putin because he keeps dropping bombs – and he’s telling Europe to “toughen up” and go cold turkey on Russian energy too. His proposed collective NATO tariffs on China of 50-100% would be a massive escalation of the gumming up process of global trade. Instead of pouring treacle into the system, they’d be dumping concrete… But America keeps on buying what it needs like titanium and nuclear plants fuel. He should lead by example. Instead, the Europeans need to suck it up, poor weaklings.

$67 was easy pickings, so Brent decided to wallop $68 too! Little wonder, as all the bullish factors are coming to a head at the end of this week. The US is reportedly pushing for G7 countries to impose 100% tariffs on China and India as a punishment for their continued purchases of Russian oil. Even though workarounds will be found, the short-term implications are bullish. Plus, the story of China buying an extra…

11 September 2025: 09:30 BST

Wow! Brent really took off after the Asian close and is now flirting with the $67 level again! But the rally came against a jittery backdrop, with the market still scared of the possibility of more Saudi barrels, regardless of the evident reality that those extra barrels are going to committed buyers. And flat price felt the pain as a result, dropping rapidly yesterday afternoon from comfortably above $67 to barely higher than $66 – and today it kept dropping, falling below $66 before the window! It recovered slightly to close at $66.27/bbl. Yet, the prompt spread managed to hold firm at 36c. As we said in Euro 2.176, backwardation is holding and that means people are buying… the price reveals the truth.