How do you measure the value of the world’s most important commodity?
It’s a conundrum that brought uproar in the oil market over the past few weeks after S&P Global Platts, the company that publishes the world’s key crude price, announced on Feb. 22 that it was going to radically change the very nature of that benchmark, known as Dated Brent.
Just nine days after announcing its ambitious overhaul, which had been meant to begin in June 2022, Platts was forced to apologize to the market for the suddenness of the move. A week later it went a step further: the changes would be shelved for an as-yet-undefined period.
