Gate News, April 10, according to the Financial Times, European and Asian refineries are scrambling to buy oil, driving North Sea crude oil prices to a record high. Iran’s continued control of the Strait of Hormuz has also sparked fresh market concerns. Data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) shows that Brent North Sea Forties crude (the European benchmark crude), which serves as a spot-delivery crude oil indicator, closed on Thursday at nearly $147 per barrel, higher than the peak reached just before the 2008 financial crisis. The price is far above the roughly $50 gap between it and the June futures contract price of international benchmark Brent crude—another sign that the oil market is experiencing a shortage. Traders said that because the price broke through the $30 per-barrel threshold set by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE, a global energy futures exchange), they are unable to buy next week’s Brent crude differential contracts (CFDs, financial instruments used to hedge oil price risk). The contract tracks the difference between spot-delivery and forward-delivery prices.
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