A cargo of crude oil is, in a sense, a raw material: whatever it is, it is. Refined products are different in a way that changes everything about how they trade and how they get defrauded. A cargo of gasoline or jet fuel is not really three hundred thousand barrels of liquid. It is three hundred thousand barrels measured against a written specification, and the moment the liquid stops meeting the sheet, it stops being the product at all. That single fact, that the product is

An offer of crude arrives with its own set of questions. Is this barrel actually available to sell, does the buyer have somewhere real to take it, and can the quantity and quality on the paperwork be independently confirmed before money moves. This piece breaks down how crude actually gets from a well to a buyer, where volume is already committed before it reaches the open market, the physical path a barrel takes on the way to port, what proof of product and proof of refinery