Reuters ahead on North Sea crude oil sales for March

Reuters was first on February 5 with the news of the loading schedules for all four of the big crude oil production streams in the North Sea at the beginning of February, giving subscribers key information about the amount of oil coming on to the spot market over the next two months. Details of the output of the Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk crude oil streams — which together make up the North Sea BFOE benchmark on which as much as a quarter of the world’s oil is priced — were published by Reuters up to 25 minutes ahead of Dow Jones and Bloomberg. Reuters has spent several years building up contacts with insiders in the oil industry to be sure of getting details of the loadings schedules to subscribers ahead of competitors and now has unrivalled access to this market-moving news. March supplies of Brent and Ekofisk will be lower than in February, Reuters told the market, helping support prices, traders said.