Well report No. RR-4176 · T20N · R8W · SEC 8 · filed October 14, 2026
Petroleum MarketsWell report
Iranian Heavy Crude Clears $105/b in September, OPEC Data Show
OPEC monthly data put Iranian Heavy above $105/b in September, a rare level for a grade long sold at a discount to Brent and favored by complex Asian refineries.
Field notes
- Iranian Heavy traded above $105/b in September, per OPEC monthly data reported by IranOilGas.
- The figure comes from OPEC's own crude price reporting for member grades.
- Iranian Heavy is a heavy sour grade historically sold at a discount to Brent.
- A $10/b feedstock move on a 200,000-b/d heavy-crude unit equals roughly $730 million per year.
- The October OPEC monthly report is the next data point to watch.
Iranian Heavy fetched more than $105/b in September, according to OPEC's monthly data. That is the number that moves this story. A grade long traded at a discount to Brent has now printed above a threshold few sour-crude sellers reach in a soft market.
The figure comes from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose monthly reports track official selling prices and spot assessments for member crudes. IranOilGas reported the data first. For context: $105/b is roughly double the level Iranian Heavy changed hands at during the depth of the 2020 demand collapse, and it sits well above the discount band that Iranian barrels have historically occupied against Brent and Urals.
What does a $105 print for Iranian Heavy actually mean?
Iranian Heavy is a sour, dense stream, priced in normal times at a discount to lighter Middle East benchmarks. Buyers of heavy sour crude — mostly complex refineries in Asia configured to run resid and squeeze residual fuel margins — pay less per barrel, not more. So a print above $105 carries two possible readings.
First, the absolute level of the market: if OPEC's basket and comparable heavy grades moved higher in September, Iranian Heavy rides the tide. Second, and more interesting for refinery planners, the relative level: a heavy sour barrel trading above $105 implies either unusually tight heavy-supply fundamentals or a pricing assessment shaped by sanctions-driven trading channels, where reported levels and realized netbacks do not always match.
OPEC publishes the number. It does not publish the discount structure behind every transaction, and that gap is where the analysis lives rather than in the headline figure itself.
Who runs this barrel, and who watches it?
The natural constituency for Iranian Heavy is the complex-refining segment: cokers, visbreakers and hydrocrackers that turn dense feed into distillate and gasoline. When heavy sour supply tightens — OPEC+ cuts have concentrated on removing medium and heavy barrels — those refineries pay up. When Mexican and Saudi heavy streams return, they pay less.
The September figure, per OPEC's own data, lands in a period when the producer group has been unwinding some voluntary cuts while others remain in force. Simple arithmetic for the refiner: a $10/b move on a 200,000-b/d heavy-crude unit is roughly $730 million a year in feedstock cost. At $105-plus, every delay in alternative heavy supply shows up on the resid slate.
The takeaway in plain words: the official number says heavy sour crude was expensive in September, and complex refineries felt it.
The watch item
The figure that matters next is the October assessment. Watch three things: the pace of OPEC+ supply returns, the discount or premium Iranian Heavy posts against the OPEC basket month over month, and whether reported prices and realized trading levels converge. OPEC's next monthly report will carry the answer. Until then, treat $105 as a data point from the producer group's own ledger — attributed, not asserted.
via Google News: OPEC and oil markets (Source)
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