Oil pricing agency Platts is taking new technical steps to protect the Brent benchmark from declining North Sea output, in what could be a first step in radically overhauling the product to eventually include grades from outside the region. Output from the North Sea fields off Britain and Norway has declined steeply in recent years as deposits are mature and among the world’s most expensive to develop. That has triggered worries from market participants that the Dated Brent benchmark, which Platts assesses based on four North Sea physical oil streams, was vulnerable to manipulation because physical volumes have become too thin and hence at times could be accumulated in the hands of just a few players. As oil prices collapsed to below $30 per barrel in January […]