War or peacetime, oil prices are not discovered at their major production centres, namely, the Middle East, but at their speculation centres in London, which has a thriving derivatives market for Brent crude oil. Brent establishes the price for approximately 80% of globally traded petroleum, particularly for Atlantic-basin grades, although the region contributes a declining share of less than 1% of the overall global output. That it is benchmarked for the Middle East oil, with a suitable reduction for its inferior quality vis-à-vis the sweet Brent oil, doesn’t disabuse this seeming and palpable oddity. Come to think of it, the actual Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, and Troll (BFOET) fields that constitute the benchmark are a small subset of the over 100 million barrels per day (mb/d) of the total global liquid fuel production (expected to be around 106.3 mb/d in 2025).

The world sets store by the Brent prices apparently because Brent acts as a transparent, liquid, and financially driven global benchmark, whereas Middle Eastern oil is largely sold through opaque, long-term bilateral contracts. London provides a mature and stable financial infrastructure with open, high-volume futures trading on the ICE exchange, reflecting immediate market sentiment and risk, unlike regional production centres. London's ICE Futures Europe is the primary venue for trading Brent, attracting global speculators, hedge funds, and commercials, which creates high liquidity and transparent, minute-by-minute pricing. This is the refrain of the market fundamentalists, which is uncomfortably true as the ongoing hostilities in the Middle East prove. Another refrain is Brent is "light" (low density) and "sweet" (low........

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