Europe and Syria took center stage at the Group of 20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico, this week. But in the oil industry, all eyes were on a report that signaled regulators are backing away from efforts to ratchet up scrutiny of the $2 trillion-a-year market.

In an interim report to the G-20, ahead of final recommendations later this year, the International Organization of Securities Commissions, an association of global financial-markets regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, retreated from an earlier proposal to set up a regulatory body to oversee the so-called physical oil market—where oil on tankers and in pipelines is traded between major oil producers and refiners such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell.