The Officials Benchmarks | Quarterly Volumes Review – Q3 2025 Skip to main content

Quarterly Volumes Review – Q3 2025

Oil-derivatives trading fell year on year in Q3, signalling a shift toward longer-term, fundamentals-led positioning.
Published: 1 December 2025
Share

In this quarterly review We document a pronounced decline in traded oil-derivatives volumes to 232 bn bbls, versus 258 bn bbls in the same period a year prior, despite broadly stable open interest, and interpret this as evidence of a shift toward longer-duration, fundamentals-anchored speculative positioning, and away from headline driven reactive position taking.

an impact-probability model of Trump’s Truth Social posts combined with a structural VAR, we show that informational shocks which previously generated material increases in trading activity largely ceased to elicit a comparable response in Q3. Alongside the mainstreaming of sizeable forward supply surpluses and a notable dislocation in Dubai swaps, we conclude that Q3 represents a temporary episode of lower trading intensity within an otherwise robust expansion of global oil-derivatives markets, with volumes projected to resume their upward trend into 2026-27.

The Officials publish outright values, spreads, cracks and boxes for the main energy commodities traded in the marketplace. The published values are determined independently and on a fair market basis by our team of dedicated professionals.

We invite you to read our reports, which are published twice a day, reflecting closing values at 16:30 Singapore time (SGT) and at 16:30 London time (GMT/BST). For any comments, please reach out to us through the emails provided in the signed documents.

About Quarterly Volumes Review

More News

Should we be alarmed?

Edition: Euro EditionVolume: 3Issue: 122
Canada has some seriously ambitious pipeline aspirations, Germany’s car industry can’t catch a break as China continues to steal market shar
26 June 2026

Peering Eye 1.32

Edition: Peering EyeVolume: 1Issue: 32
Vessel count changes w/w were flat apart from Dubai, Khasab and especially Fujairah who all saw their tanker counts explode.
26 June 2026

Full steam ahead!

Edition: Asia EditionVolume: 3Issue: 120
Vessel traffic is up in the Strait despite the targeting of a Taiwanese cargo ship, Ukrainian drone strikes are now hampering Kazakhstan oil
26 June 2026