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S&P Global Commodity Insights

U.S. corporate business/market-data press (non-partisan, industry-focused)

Owned byS&P Global Inc. (NYSE: SPGI), a publicly traded company. The unit was Platts, then Commodity Insights after the 2022 IHS Markit merger. It was renamed S&P Global Energy in November 2025. S&P Global spun off its Mobility division as a separate company on July 1, 2026. That spin-off did not change the energy and commodities unit's ownership.
FundingMostly paid subscriptions and licensing. Customers pay for Platts price assessments, benchmark data, analytics and news, and the data is used in contract pricing. Some revenue comes from conferences and events. Most of the news content is paywalled or restricted to subscribers.
On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The business traces to 1909, when Warren Platt founded the magazine National Petroleum News in Cleveland. McGraw-Hill acquired it in 1953, and it grew into Platts, a major price reporting agency (PRA) for oil, gas, power, metals and petrochemicals. McGraw-Hill later became McGraw Hill Financial and then S&P Global in 2016, when the unit was renamed S&P Global Platts. After S&P Global merged with IHS Markit in 2022, Platts and IHS Markit's energy and resources research were combined as S&P Global Commodity Insights. The unit was renamed S&P Global Energy in November 2025. Platts benchmarks such as Dated Brent underpin pricing in many physical oil and commodity contracts. Its price-setting process (the Market on Close assessment) has drawn regulatory scrutiny. In 2013 the European Commission investigated PRAs including Platts over possible price manipulation, and I recall the case ending with commitments from Platts, though I did not verify that detail in this session. Its reporting is written for trading and industry audiences and is generally factual and data-driven. As a commercial data provider, its incentives are to stay credible with market participants, and it has no political agenda. Its Trump-era coverage focuses on tariffs, sanctions, energy policy and their effects on prices and trade flows. It also publishes a dedicated 'Trump and Commodities' topic page.

Sources

  1. S&P Global Energy (Wikipedia)
  2. Our History – S&P Global Commodity Insights
  3. S&P Global Is Spinning Off Its Mobility Business This Summer (Motley Fool)
  4. Trump and Commodities – S&P Global
  5. S&P Global Inc. Form 10-Q (June 30, 2026)

Profile compiled 2026-10-11; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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