Oil pricing agencies battle over benchmarks

LONDON (Reuters) – How much does a barrel of oil cost? With billions of dollars at stake, sometimes the answer depends who is doing the asking.

The most visible answer is the figure flashing up on futures screens across the financial globe.

In reality that is merely the top of a pricing pyramid based on a subtle exchange of information between traders and reporters tracking physical crude market deals.

The army of agency reporters are the oil industry’s sherpas, delivering data from point to point for paying clients, some of whom are commodity investors, some of whom seek fuel for physical delivery.

Reuters