Physical Oil Flips From Bidding War To Fire Sale As Gulf Barrels Flood Back For much of the past two months, the most important oil price in the world was the one nobody saw on TV. While ICE Brent futures chopped around in a range, the price of actual, deliverable barrels went parabolic: as we noted at the time, Dated Brent refused to come down even as Gulf flows recovered, North Sea Forties was quoted above $140 a barrel in early October, and refiners scrambling for prompt cargoes were paying whatever it took.
Regular readers will recall we have been pounding the table on this "huge physical disconnect" since the first weeks of the war, when the physical market was screaming far louder than the paper one. Well, the physical market is screaming again. Only this time, in the other direction.
According to Bloomberg , rebounding flows out of the Persian Gulf are sending the cost of physical cargoes tumbling everywhere from the Middle East to the North Sea and West Africa.