It was once a behemoth, a massive North Sea oil field whose importance to the world crude market was summed up by its name atop the global benchmark price: Brent. Today, the Brent field, northeast of Scotland’s remote Shetland Islands, is all but tapped dry. It produces about 1,000 barrels a day in a global market of 93 million daily barrels. Royal Dutch Shell PLC is awaiting approval to scrap the first of four Eiffel Tower-sized platforms that have sucked Brent-branded crude from the seabed for almost 40 years. In a few years, the Brent benchmark—a crucial metric for global oil prices—will contain no actual Brent at all. With aging North Sea fields running out of crude faster than predicted, changes to how the global price of oil is calculated are being accelerated, putting a spotlight on the methods used to put a value on the world’s most […]