Brent Oil is used as the benchmark for more than half of all global transactions but only a bit more than one percent originates from the four production sites which make up the benchmark.

Daily output has dropped below 1 million barrels per day compared with global production of more than 90 million barrels per day.

Falling North Sea production of Brent Crude has put into question the robustness of the benchmark as it leaves it open to market abuse. A relatively small snap shot of Brent trade activity sets the price and therefore makes it theoretically easy to fix prices.   

The ratio between the volume being produced: 1 million barrels per day, and volume traded: around 550 million barrels per day, is also undermining the logic of having Brent used as the global benchmark.