The oil supply crunch is spreading from the Gulf to the rest of the world

, traders say, can be chalked up to WTI’s location, far from where the oil is needed in Asia. Its lower price also reflects the higher shipping costs required to get it to Asian buyers, as well as angst that the U.S.

might restrict crude exports to husband energy resources at home.Asian refiners are hunting for sulfur-rich oil to replace the Middle Eastern grades that are getting prohibitively expensive, driving up prices for oil from Norway, Russia, Colombia and even some crude from the U.S. Cargoes are diverting from Europe to Asia, where the shock from the Persian Gulf is most acute and traders can earn a premium.Brent itself has much less sulfur than Dubai oil.

And widely tracked Brent futures contracts are for crude that will be delivered in May, when many traders think the war might be over. Some also say futures have become a poor guide to conditions in the physical oil market because banks, commodity traders and hedge funds have reined in activity to avoid big losses, creating a vicious cycle of thin trading and huge spikes and slumps.Markets in the Gulf have been so chaotic that prices for Dubai, the oil, don’t even include crude from Dubai, the emirate, right now.

It can’t get out of the strait, so price-tracking firms removed the grade from their calculations.Instead, the prices reflect deals for oil from Oman—just outside Hormuz—and a dribble of crude from Abu Dhabi that gets piped to the port of Fujairah, also beyond the strait’s narrowest stretch.The trading arm of French oil producer TotalEnergies has been particularly active, buying dozens of cargoes, said people who have tracked the sales on a platform run by S&P Global. How much of the oil Total has agreed to sell onward couldn’t be learned, but the