Brent Crude
ICE
The waterborne Atlantic basin benchmark that sets the price for most of the world's internationally traded crude.
Top Producers
share of 2025 dated Brent deliverable supply by stream
Top Consumers
share of 2025 global oil consumption by region
Main Uses
global oil demand by product, 2024 (IEA)
Top Exporters
share of 2024 seaborne and pipeline crude oil exports
Top Importers
share of 2024 global crude oil imports
Global Liquids Production
country share of roughly 105 million barrels per day of total liquids (crude, condensate, NGLs, biofuels, refinery processing gain), 2025 (IEA and EIA)
Global Liquids Consumption
share of roughly 105 million barrels per day of total liquids demand, 2025 (IEA and EIA)
Share of world crude priced off Brent
roughly two-thirds of internationally traded volume
as of 2025
ICE Brent futures volume
more than 1 million contracts/day
as of 2025
North Sea BFOET loadings
roughly 600,000 b/d before Midland inclusion
as of 2023
Record intraday price
$147.50 in July 2008; $139.13 on March 7, 2022; the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis peak was $126 on April 30, 2026
as of June 2026
Brent began as oil from a single North Sea field, discovered in 1971 and producing from 1976, and grew into the pricing reference for roughly two-thirds of internationally traded crude. The benchmark is really a complex: dated Brent, the Platts assessment of physical cargo values; the BFOET forward market; and ICE Brent futures, which cash-settle against an index of forward-market trades. Because the underlying cargoes load onto tankers rather than into pipelines, Brent reflects seaborne, freely arbitraged oil, which is why grades from West Africa to the Mediterranean to Asia price against it rather than against landlocked WTI.
North Sea decline forced repeated surgery on the basket. Forties and Oseberg joined Brent in 2002, Ekofisk in 2007, and Troll in 2018, each addition propping up deliverable volume as the original streams faded. The decisive change came in June 2023, when Platts admitted WTI Midland, a US export grade, as the first crude from outside the North Sea. Midland cargoes now set the dated Brent price on a majority of trading days, an outcome that would have been unthinkable in 2010, when US crude could not legally be exported at all.
Brent is also the geopolitical barometer. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Brent traded to $139.13 intraday on March 7, 2022, its highest since 2008, and the subsequent G7 price cap and EU embargo were defined relative to Brent-linked values. The Brent-Dubai EFS connects it to the Asian sour market, and almost every term contract from West Africa, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea is a differential to dated Brent.
How It Trades
| Venue | ICE Futures Europe (futures and options); physical cargoes and forwards assessed in the Platts MOC window |
| Benchmark contract | ICE Brent Crude futures (B) |
| Contract size | 1,000 barrels |
| Price terms | USD per barrel |
| Settlement | Cash settled against the ICE Brent Index, built from BFOET forward-market trades; an exchange-for-physical mechanism links futures to wet barrels |
| Typical curve | Backwardation is the historical norm in balanced-to-tight markets; deep contango marked the 2015-2016 glut and the 2020 COVID collapse, when traders chartered tankers purely as floating storage |
| Liquidity | More than one million futures contracts per day across the curve, with liquidity further out than any other oil contract |
Where It Trades
approximate share of global daily traded Brent volume, 2025
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- UK and Norwegian North Sea: Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, and Troll streams
- US Permian Basin via WTI Midland, admitted to the basket in June 2023
- Atlantic basin grades priced against Brent: West African, Mediterranean, and North Sea crudes
North Sea BFOET loadings alone had fallen to roughly 600,000 barrels per day before WTI Midland's inclusion roughly doubled the deliverable supply behind the assessment.
Top consumers
- Northwest European refiners (Rotterdam, Antwerp, German inland plants)
- Mediterranean refiners
- Asian buyers pricing Atlantic basin and Middle East term barrels via Brent-linked formulas
Major uses
- Refined into the full product barrel
- Reference price for roughly two-thirds of internationally traded crude
- Settlement basis for the world's largest oil swaps and options complex alongside WTI
What Moves the Price
- OPEC+ supply policy, since Gulf exports price into the Atlantic basin via Brent-linked formulas
- Atlantic basin supply: North Sea maintenance seasons, West African loadings, US export volumes
- European refinery demand and seasonal turnarounds
- Geopolitical risk premia: Russia sanctions, Middle East conflict, shipping disruption through chokepoints
- The Brent-WTI spread, which governs how much US crude crosses the Atlantic
- The Brent-Dubai EFS, which governs how much Atlantic crude flows east
- Freight rates, since the benchmark is waterborne and delivered values move with tanker markets
Moments That Made the Market
1976
Brent field begins production; by the mid-1980s the cargo market in its crude becomes the open-market price reference
1988
The International Petroleum Exchange, later ICE Futures Europe, launches Brent futures in June 1988
2002
Forties and Oseberg join the assessment as Brent field output declines; Ekofisk follows in 2007
2008
Brent peaks near $147 in July 2008 at the top of the commodity supercycle
2018
Troll added to the basket in January 2018, the last purely North Sea fix
2022
Russia invades Ukraine; Brent hits $139.13 intraday on March 7, 2022, and the G7 price cap regime on Russian crude follows in December 2022
2023
WTI Midland enters dated Brent from June 2023 loadings, the first non-North Sea grade in the basket
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- The basket was rebuilt: Troll added in 2018 and WTI Midland in June 2023, so dated Brent is now frequently set by American barrels
- US exports restored the transatlantic arbitrage as a permanent feature rather than a rarity
- Russian Urals, once the largest crude stream priced against dated Brent, was embargoed by the EU in December 2022 and rerouted to Asia under the G7 price cap
- The open-outcry IPE floor is long gone; Brent trades electronically around the clock
- Brent overtook WTI during the 2011-2015 Cushing-glut era as the default global price quoted in headlines, and kept that role