Both benchmarks barely moved overnight. Brent settled at $109.801, up just $0.23 on the day, and WTI at $98.706, up $0.17. Gains on both sides stayed under $0.30, a quiet tape on the surface.

Underneath, the spread is quietly reopening. Brent minus WTI widened back to $11.10 after sitting near $8 in early October, thickening the premium that light-sweet crude commands over US Gulf heavy. The first reaction for a trader running arbitrage is not "oil went up" but "which grades land cheaper."

The yuan did the heavy lifting. USD/CNY traded to 6.679, firmer than last week's 6.687–6.705. In our listed price formula, the exchange rate is a multiplier: Brent times FX times 7.33 times grade. A small crude gain was more than offset by a stronger yuan, pulling the duty-paid landed cost to roughly 5,380 yuan per tonne — slightly below where it stood a few sessions ago.

That reopens the feed window for short-haul light-sweet grades. ESPO loads at Kozmino and reaches Shandong in four to six days; Dubai and Oman carry split but manageable premiums. Against a transatlantic WTI or a US Gulf long-haul cargo, both freight and working-capital drag are lower. On today's numbers, buying ESPO, Dubai or Oman beats chasing WTI.

For the seven-grade SNSUC re-export book, a wider spread does not change the "light-sweet first" structure — it just reshuffles the ranking. Reusing last week's landed-cost table would be a mistake; today's spread and FX have to be repriced.