Is the leadership of the Brent-WTI threatened by China’s new crude oil futures market?

The recent listing of a new crude oil futures contract on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) has reopened the debate over whether crude oil produced in different countries or locations constitutes a unified world oil market. The aim of this paper is to study the information flows among Brent, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and the new Medium Sour Crude Oil (SC) futures contract listed on INE futures markets to assess whether the trading of this new futures contract has altered the dominant role of the most traded oil benchmarks in the world. A multiple regression model identifies the Brent futures market as the most influential market in the oil price discovery process, while WTI appears to be the most sensitive. Furthermore, we have observed that SC does not influence any market and it is only sensitive to Brent news, even though WTI is the most heavily traded futures contract. Therefore, the launch of the SC futures contract has not yet altered the dominant role of Brent over WTI.