Oil price settlement vs last trade: why your Brent number doesn't match the news

The Brent price in a news report is usually the ICE settlement, and its daily change is measured from the previous settlement. For the live ICE Brent contract months, OilPriceAPI returns a close captured after the session and a change measured from the session open, with settlement null.

ICE sets the settlement as “The weighted average price of trades during a two minute settlement period from 19:28:00, London time.” The contract keeps trading until 11:00 PM London time. On Nov 11, 2026 our API captured the January 2027 close at 23:56:32 UTC: 92.45. Its change_percent was +0.54%, from the open of 91.95. Measured from the Nov 10 captured close of 91.92, the same close is +0.58%. The row's settlement was null.

So a gap between our Brent number and the news is expected. The two prices come from trades about four hours apart, and the two percentages use different starting points.

The API does return one Brent settlement, on the continuous series: the front-month daily bar for NYMEX Brent Last Day Financial futures, which is not the ICE settlement. A known filing defect also puts it on rows labelled with the expired December 2026 contract. The guide covers it.

The full explanation, with every Nov 9-13 row, the WTI contract where we do carry a settlement, and how to compute a headline-style change from our data, is in the guide: oil price settlement vs last trade. The curve itself is on the Brent futures curve page, and the front-month quote on the live Brent price page.