Your fuel clause says 'Brent'. That is two prices, $8 apart

If your fuel escalation clause says "Brent" and nothing else, it has two faults and both of them cost you money. The first is that "Brent" is not one price. North Sea Dated reached $113.48 a barrel on 9 September while ICE Brent futures were trading around $105, and a clause that does not name the series has an $8 argument built into it. The second fault is bigger: crude is not the fuel your delivery burns. Index the clause to diesel.

The gap between the two is the whole story this year. In the IEA's September Oil Market Report, ICE Brent at $105 was 45 per cent above pre-war levels. Diesel and gasoil in the United States passed $200 a barrel in early September, 94 per cent above, "with Europe and Asia not far behind". Crude has gone up by half. Diesel has roughly doubled. A surcharge tied to crude has been recovering about half of what your haulier has actually been charging you.

Name the series, the publisher and the reading date

A usable index has three parts, and a clause that omits any one of them is decided by whoever argues harder. Write the full name of the assessment — "ICE Brent Futures front-month settlement price" or "Platts Dated Brent", not "Brent". Write who publishes it. And write the date on which it is read: the date of dispatch, the first working day of the month of delivery, or an average over a stated window, but one of them, chosen once.

Two more lines earn their place. A base level, so the clause says what index value the quoted price was built on rather than leaving the starting point to memory. And a fallback: if the named assessment stops being published or changes methodology, the parties use the successor assessment nominated by the same publisher. That paragraph takes thirty seconds to write and prevents the argument that follows any index being retired.

Index to the fuel, not the crude

Use the published price of the fuel that is actually burned, because the reason diesel outran crude is a refining constraint that crude prices do not capture. The IEA's own line is the one to put in front of a customer who thinks a crude index is close enough:

"Net exports of diesel/gasoil from the Gulf countries averaged 390 kb/d in August, just over a quarter of pre-war levels."

— IEA, Oil Market Report, September 2026

A quarter. Refiners elsewhere are running for record margins and it has not closed the gap, and the agency expects the demand it has taken out of its 2026 forecast to fall hardest on middle distillates. Diesel is a middle distillate. Until refining capacity catches up with where the barrels now have to be processed, the crack stays wide and a crude index keeps under-reading it.

Which diesel index depends on where the fuel is bought, and the rule is to name the one your own invoice follows. Where a government notifies a price, that notification is the cleanest index there is, because both sides can look it up: in Pakistan, for instance, that is the Petroleum Division's notified ex-depot high-speed diesel price, which went from Rs 398.04 to Rs 403.32 a litre on 12 September. Where fuel is bought on the open market, use a published gasoil assessment or the diesel series your national statistics office publishes, named in full.

One caution about a notified price: part of it never moves with the market. A notification of that kind bundles levies, dealer and marketing margins and inland freight equalisation, which in the September build-up came to about a quarter of the pump figure and sat unchanged from one notification to the next. If your clause adjusts the whole delivered price by the full percentage change in a notified fuel price, you are escalating tax as well as fuel. Index the fuel component of your cost, not the invoice total.

If you are rewriting a quotation template this quarter and want the delivered price built the same way, send the drawing to Vesprr Workshop and the quote comes back with the fuel and freight basis named on it rather than buried in the rate.

Sources

• International Energy Agency, Oil Market Report — September 2026, 11 September 2026: North Sea Dated at $113.48/bbl on 9 September and an August average of $91.00; ICE Brent around $105 and 45 per cent above pre-war levels; US diesel/gasoil above $200/bbl in early September, 94 per cent above pre-war levels; Gulf net diesel/gasoil exports of 390 kb/d in August; the 2026 demand revision and its concentration in middle distillates.
• Business Recorder, "Govt hikes petrol by Rs5.02, diesel by Rs5.28 for fifth straight review", 11 September 2026: high-speed diesel from Rs 398.04 to Rs 403.32 per litre.
• Business Recorder, "Petrol price up by Rs5.58, HSD's by Rs4.18", 8 September 2026: the levy, margin and inland freight equalisation build-up behind the notified price.