A $7.50 gap between two months
November Brent futures stop trading on Wednesday, September 30, at 7:30 pm London time. Most of the market has already moved on to December, and the Brent price on our site now follows December too. Headlines quoting Brent near $107 this week are talking about November. December trades about $7.50 lower.
| Contract | Price (Tuesday, 07:22 UTC) |
|---|---|
| November 2026 (expires Wednesday) | $106.66 |
| December 2026 | $99.15 |
| January 2027 | $95.94 |
| February 2027 | $92.05 |
In a normal year neighboring Brent months trade within a dollar of each other, and the switch from one to the next barely registers. This is not a normal year.
Every month on the curve is cheaper than the one before it. Traders call this backwardation. It means buyers will pay extra to have oil in hand now rather than in a few months. Bloomberg reported that Brent's prompt spread, the gap between the first two contracts, now tops $7. A month ago, at the close of August, the same gap was below $1.
That is what a market with no spare barrels looks like. The Strait of Hormuz is still largely shut, the fighting in the region is now in its eighth month, and refiners that need crude for November are paying up to get it.
What moved oil on Tuesday
November Brent kept climbing on Tuesday even though supply news got better. Roughly half of the normal volume is moving on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline again. The line takes crude from the kingdom's eastern oil fields to the Red Sea, so those barrels never pass through Hormuz. It had been down since drone attacks earlier in September. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, put current throughput at 3.5 million barrels a day or more. We covered the first stage of that restart last week.
The diplomatic news cut the other way. Speaking privately, Iranian officials see little chance of an agreement with Washington before Americans vote in the November midterms, Bloomberg reported. Any such deal would have to halt the hostilities and get Hormuz open again. The gloom followed President Trump's rejection of Iran's plan to reopen the strait within a week.
Haris Khurshid, chief investment officer at Karobaar Capital, told Bloomberg the market "has learned that barrels keep finding a way out." He sees about $15 of downside if Washington and Tehran strike a deal the market believes in. For Brent to reach $120, he said, supply would actually have to be cut again.
WTI, the US benchmark, traded at $93.25, up 0.7%. Its November contract keeps trading until October 20.
Where the spread goes from here
The gap between November and December is the clearest read on how short of oil the market feels right now. If Saudi flows keep recovering and the Hormuz talks get going again, it should narrow. If it is still above $7 in late October, December will head into its own expiry on October 30 with the same kind of premium over January.