S&P Global Platts
Largest multi-commodity price reporting agency; assesses oil, LNG, metals and shipping benchmarks including Dated Brent.
S&P Global Platts' weekly Fujairah survey recorded light distillates at a record-low 1.203 million barrels on 29 June 2026, the same report showing fuel oil stocks up 32% to a three-month high, evidence Gulf refiners are routing light products toward Asia and away from Europe.
Last refreshed: 3 August 2026 · Appears in 6 active topics
Why is Platts' Dated Brent MOC the most consequential 30 minutes in global oil markets?
Timeline for S&P Global Platts
Recorded one Hormuz transit on 16 August, calling it a record low
Iran Conflict 2026: One ship or five? Hormuz counts splitMentioned in: Saudi crude abandons its Red Sea route
European Oil MarketsCounted about 13 vessels a day across 17-19 July, down roughly half week on week
Iran Conflict 2026: Three ships a day in an 'open' straitMentioned in: The arb flips west; no cargo follows
European Energy MarketsMentioned in: US crude waiver lapses, no successor
Russia-Ukraine War 2026Background
S&P Global Platts, now branded S&P Global Commodity Insights, is the world's largest multi-commodity price reporting agency, and during 2026's Gulf disruption its running physical surveys, rather than its benchmark prices alone, have become the desk's earliest read on where product is actually moving. Its weekly Fujairah bulletin tracked light distillates falling to a record low even as fuel oil rebuilt, exposing a regional product-routing shift before trade data confirmed it.
Founded in 1909 and acquired by S&P Global in 2016, Platts assesses Dated Brent (the North Sea BFOET basket, settled via a daily Market on Close window), Platts Dubai, and a wide slate of European refined-product and freight benchmarks that function as contractual reference prices; beyond oil it covers LNG's JKM marker, metals and agriculture. Its Fujairah, Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp and Singapore inventory surveys sit alongside the benchmarks as a second, independently useful output: a running physical census of where fuel actually sits.
That dual role, price-setter and inventory-recorder, means Platts data underwrites both financial contracts and the physical trade decisions built on top of them; a forecast built on its Dated Brent assessment, the EIA's $89 Q4 2026 projection, is already being tested against a market trading nearer $70-72 in early July.
Platts' Fujairah survey tracks the squeeze
Platts' weekly Fujairah bulletin is the market's earliest physical read on how Gulf refiners respond to the shipping crisis, since the UAE hub sits outside the strait but feeds both Hormuz-bypass and Red Sea routes. By late June its light-distillate count fell to a record 1.203 million barrels, down 14% week on week, even as heavy and middle distillates rebuilt over the same week.
Platts read the inversion as Gulf refiners diverting naphtha and gasoline-blending stocks toward Asian petrochemical demand while holding fuel oil for regional power generation and Iraq-bound exports; fuel oil stocks jumped 32% to a three-month high in the same survey. The gap between the two readings, not either number alone, is what the agency's survey is built to expose.
Reference
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