Dubai Crude Oil Price

What Dubai crude is

Dubai crude is a medium, sour oil with an API gravity of about 31° and sulfur content of about 2%. Production from Dubai's own fields is now small. The name survives because the benchmark has broadened into a basket of similar Gulf grades that sellers can deliver against a Dubai contract. That design keeps the market liquid even though Dubai itself contributes few cargoes.

Medium sour crude is the typical Middle East export, so Dubai is a closer match for Saudi, Iraqi or Kuwaiti oil than light sweet Brent or WTI. That is why Asian refiners and Gulf producers use it rather than an Atlantic Basin marker. For the quality terms, see sweet vs sour crude and API gravity.

How Platts assesses Dubai and Oman

Platts sets Dubai through its Market on Close (MOC) process, a trading window at the end of each Singapore day:

1. Traders bid and offer partials of 25,000 barrels for a loading month two months ahead.
2. When one counterparty accumulates 20 partials with another, the trades "converge" into a full 500,000-barrel physical cargo.
3. The seller then nominates which grade to deliver from the basket of deliverable crudes.
4. Platts publishes the Dubai and Oman assessments from the bids, offers and trades in the window.

Because the seller chooses the grade, the cheapest deliverable crude tends to set the price. Before the 2026 crisis, the deliverable grades were:

How Gulf producers use Dubai

National oil companies publish a monthly official selling price (OSP) for each grade and region. For Asia, the OSP is a premium or discount to the average of Dubai and Oman prices over the loading month. Saudi Aramco's monthly Arab Light OSP to Asia is the bellwether. In April 2026 Aramco raised the May Arab Light differential for Asia by $17/bbl to a premium of $19.50/bbl over Oman/Dubai, according to the IEA.

Oman crude futures trade on the Gulf Mercantile Exchange (formerly the Dubai Mercantile Exchange). Murban has its own futures contract in Abu Dhabi, which is covered on the Murban crude oil price page.

The Brent-Dubai spread and the EFS

The Brent-Dubai EFS (exchange of futures for swaps) is the price difference between ICE Brent futures and Dubai swaps for the same month. It is the market's standard measure of how much more light sweet Atlantic crude costs than medium sour Gulf crude.

• A wide EFS makes Dubai-linked crude cheap relative to Brent-linked crude. Asian refiners buy more Middle East oil and fewer cargoes from West Africa, the North Sea or the US.
• A narrow or negative EFS makes Atlantic Basin crude competitive in Asia, and arbitrage cargoes flow east.

The EFS also reflects the sweet-sour quality spread. When OPEC+ cuts output, the supply of medium sour crude falls first, which tends to narrow the spread. You can follow Brent itself on the Brent crude oil price page.

Dubai in the 2026 Hormuz crisis

The conflict that began on 28 February 2026 hit Dubai harder than any other benchmark, because most of its deliverable grades load inside the Strait of Hormuz. The IEA's Oil Market Reports describe what happened:

The episode led Asian refiners to ask Saudi Aramco to price against ICE Brent futures instead of Dubai, and raised questions about Dubai's methodology, the IEA noted. It also lifted Murban, which loads at Fujairah outside the Strait, to record premiums.

Where to find the Dubai price

Platts Dubai and Argus Dubai assessments are subscription products. Free sources include the monthly OSP announcements from Gulf producers (reported by news agencies), the Oman futures settlement published by the Gulf Mercantile Exchange, and the monthly price tables in the IEA Oil Market Report and OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report. No free live Dubai widget is reliable, so this site does not show one. For context, the crude oil benchmarks guide compares Dubai with every other marker.