Brent's relevance comes from being seaborne. A cargo priced against Brent can go anywhere, so it reflects global supply and demand in a way that a landlocked benchmark cannot. Most of Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia price crude at a differential to Brent.
The underlying basket has been widened repeatedly as North Sea production declined — Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, Troll and, since 2023, WTI Midland — because a benchmark needs enough physical volume behind it to be manipulation-resistant.
The ICE contract settles financially against the Brent Index rather than by physical delivery, which is why it never had a 2020-style collapse: an expiring long owes cash, not the problem of finding a tank.
Example: Brent at $82.20 against WTI at $78.60 gives a brent-wti-spread of $3.60. A European refiner deciding between a Forties cargo and imported US barrels compares that spread with the roughly $2.50 to $4.00 cost of Atlantic freight.
Related: cl, brent-wti-spread, ice-exchange, light-sweet-crude, cash-settlement