In one day — Friday 11 September 2026 — two prices for the same barrel of oil moved in opposite directions. The cost of shipping a barrel from the Gulf of Oman to China reached about $11.50, its highest level since the launch of the benchmark that measures it, according to Reuters. On the same day, Brent crude closed at $104.61, down 2.81%. The figure investors read in every bulletin excludes the cost of moving the barrel, and at these levels transport alone accounts for about 9.9% of the barrel's cost on arrival to an Asian buyer. This report does not stop at the size of the gap: the metric producing the freight figure has itself become the subject of litigation.
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