Brent crude trades near $106 on Thursday

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Brent crude oil, extracted from the North Sea, is trading on Thursday around $106 per barrel, marking a slight decline of 0.1%.

Since 2007, the benchmark Brent crude has been a blend of several oil grades produced from offshore fields such as Brent, Forties, Oseberg, and Ekofisk, located between the coasts of Norway and the UK.

The price difference between these Brent grades and Urals crude, a Russian blend, typically ranges from $8 to $15 per barrel.

Major trading platforms for oil include international commodity exchanges like NYMEX (WTI, US) and ICE (Brent, Europe), as well as regional exchanges such as SPBME (Urals, Russia) and SGX (Asia).

Trading is conducted through futures and spot contracts linked to benchmark crude grades: American WTI, European Brent, and Asian Dubai/Oman, which collectively shape the global oil pricing landscape.

This analysis was presented by Alexey Grishchenko, Ph.D., Professor at the Department of Operational and Sectoral Management of the "Higher School of Management" Faculty at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.