Investing.com - Leading oil pricing agency S&P Global Platts said Monday it will add Norway's Troll crude to the existing basket that makes up the dated Brent benchmark from January of next year.
Platts said it would add Norway's Troll crude to the four British and Norwegian crudes it already uses to assess dated Brent from January 1 2018.
Toll will join Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk, or BFOE as they are known.
Dated Brent is at the core of the Brent crude complex and represents the most competitive grade of a basket of crudes loading in the North Sea on any given day.
The overhaul of the Brent oil assessment is being made to ensure there is sufficient supply underpinning the benchmark price for most of the world's oil.
"Dated Brent is a robust and well-supplied crude benchmark, but it is important to prepare for the future, in particular, the expected decline in North Sea production and the changing quality of the whole crude slate," Jonty Rushforth, Global Editorial Director of S&P Global Platts said.
"Troll is the closest to the existing BFOE grades in characteristics and should provide an additional quarter of a million of barrels a day of deliverable crude."
Troll is a light sweet crude oil grade with a typical production of 10-15 cargoes of 600,000 barrels each month.
The inclusion of Troll marks the first change to the dated Brent benchmark in over a decade. The last crude grade to be added was Ekofisk, in 2007.