Asian Oil Prices Crash After Mystery Trader Who Bid Dubai Oil To $170, Identified

Something strange happened exactly a week ago: with WTI trading at $100, and Brent spiking to almost $120 on brief fears that the US would halt exports (thus landlocking WTI and prompting a record gap with Brent), Asian oils - in the form of cash Dubai and Oman crudes - soared to the highest price ever record for a barrel of oil anywhere, in any variant: just over $170. It prompted, what we called,a splintering of the oil market.

And now we have three oil markets: Asia (Oman oil at $167), Brent ($113) and US (WTI $97) https://t.co/uHmMD24E9G pic.twitter.com/41a4BhKOIA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 19, 2026

And while much of this move could be attributed to the panic surrounding the daily war newsflow, much of the move didn't make sense as a decent portion of the flows through the "blockaded" Strait in fact persisted, with tankers to China flowing as usual, Iran's own exports soaring...

... and flows to India and Japan increasingly normalizing, especially if they paid the $2 million toll per ship that Iran has now instituted. 

This unprecedented disconnect between Asian oil and the broader market prompted a question: is someone aggressively buying up Asian oil, far beyond where it makes fundamental sense?

It turns out the answer was yes, and we now know who: 

According to Bloomberg, the trading arm of French oil major TotalEnergies SE embarked on one of the biggest-ever buying sprees of Middle Eastern oil this month, helping to send prices soaring in a market already facing a liquidity squeeze because of the war. 

So far in March, Total has purchased 69 cargoes of crude that sets the Middle East’s Dubai benchmark, according to traders monitoring the pricing window operated by Platts. By comparison, a total of 347 Dubai cargoes changed hands during the whole of 2025. 

In other words, the French company, whether it meant to or not, was effectively assisting Iran in its mission to make Asian oil unaffordable and pushing the Pacific Rim economy into recession. 

As Bloomberg notes, "several traders said the scale of the Total purchases was unprecedented in their experience, and added to upward pressure and sharp price moves at a time when there were already far fewer barrels than normal available to set the region’s main crude price."

The war in the Middle East upended the Dubai crude market, which serves a crucial role as a pricing reference for oil sold by several of the world’s biggest producers, including top exporter Saudi Arabia. It’s also the benchmark against which lots of consuming nations in Asia price their purchases. In addition to underpinning real-world transactions, about $200 billion worth of derivatives contracts linked to Dubai traded on futures contracts last year. And, most importantly, it feeds such key end markets as China, India, Japan and Korea.

Much of the supply that feeds the Dubai market is located inside the Persian Gulf, rendering it largely inaccessible to global markets as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. However, the pricing benchmarks are still needed to value the oil that continues to flow from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates via pipelines that circumvent the strait. Platts stopped including barrels from inside the Gulf in its assessments shortly after the war began.

And while betting big on the Dubai market could be viewed as a bet that the Iran war will restrict supplies for months to come, because cargoes that are being traded now don’t load until May, some of Total's counterparties said that prices had risen so high as a result of Total’s bidding that it had become attractive to wager on them declining in the short-term. 

In the pricing window, companies exchange derivatives contracts that equate to 25,000 barrels of oil. When two companies have traded 20 such contracts against one another, the buyer receives a 500,000 barrel cargo. If they don’t meet that threshold the contracts settle financially. At one point, those partial contracts were trading $60 higher than Dubai swaps; it’s rare for crudes to trade at a premium of more than a handful of dollars to their benchmark.

Said otherwise, through its trading Total was effectively doing Iran's job for it, pushing oil to catastrophic levels.

And yet things changed yesterday: as we first pointed out, Asian oil prices tumbled yesterday when more traders realized that Hormuz transits to Asia were gradually normalizing. 

Market figured out oil transits to Asia (China, India, Japan) are starting to flow https://t.co/vtUpBxRF1a

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 25, 2026

It turns out Total had a role in that too: another example of the impact the French company's activity had on regional prices came when it briefly stopped bidding on Wednesday and futures markets tied to regional crude benchmarks collapsed. Oman futures fell as much as $48 at one point, while Murban was down almost $20. Both are nearing expiry meaning that trading activity on the nearest months is much lower than it would otherwise be.

Indeed, this morning Asian oil prices have crashed further as more traders are now taking the other side of Total in the Asian oil market.

It would be ironic if Total is still long oil it bought much higher and suddenly finds itself facing a huge P&L hole, forcing it to scramble and sell at any price once it is hit with margin calls.

How ironic would it be if the French energy major, instead of helping Iran, ends up sending Asian oil prices well below Brent in the coming days.