MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) have officially started trading the United Arab Emirate’s (UAE) flagship crude oil, Murban, as a Futures contract on the new ICE Futures Abu Dhabi (IFAD) commodities exchange, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The introduction of the worlds first Murban Futures contract is the latest step in ADNOC’s ongoing transformation into a more market and customer centric organisation. By making Murban a freely traded crude, similar to Brent or WTI, customers have better price transparency, flexibility to hedge and manage risks and increased access to Murban crude. For ADNOC, its flagship crude grade becomes more available to a broader set of market participants around the world.
Alongside ICE and ADNOC, nine of the world’s largest energy companies and traders are joining IFAD as founding partners. This includes BP, GS Caltex, INPEX, ENEOS, PetroChina, PTT, Shell, Total and Vitol. Representatives from the partner companies joined today’s launch event at ADGM, many participating virtually from around the world.
In March, ADNOC announced that its Murban, Upper Zakum, Das and Umm Lulu crude grades will all be sold destination free, from June, allowing its crude oils to become a freely-traded commodity.
Discovered in 1958, Murban has played a pivotal role as the bedrock of the UAE’s sustained economic development. With the launch of IFAD and the new Murban Futures Contract, it enters a new era, further solidifying Abu Dhabi’s position as a global energy hub and a reliable and essential energy provider to the world.
ICE Murban Futures are physically delivered contracts, with one futures contract equating to 1,000 barrels of Murban crude oil delivered from the ADNOC Terminal located in Fujairah, on the East coast of the UAE. Murban is ADNOC’s flagship crude grade, with production capacity of over 2 million barrels per day at present. It currently accounts for around 50% of the UAE’s total production capacity, with plans in place to increase the production of Murban to more than 2.5 million barrels per day by 2030, in line with ADNOC’s goal of growing its production capacity to 5 million barrels of crude per day.
Murban Futures will trade globally on the ICE platform, one of the world’s foremost energy exchange networks. All trades clear through ICE Clear Europe, based in London. From late March, Murban now trades alongside ICE Brent and ICE WTI in the ICE network.
As MRC reported before, in early March, 2021, the UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. signed an agreement with Malaysia's Petronas to explore collaboration in the oil and gas sector of Abu Dhabi and in the low-carbon energy industry in the first such partnership between the two national oil producers.
We remind that in early May, 2020, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) began a gradual restart of its Ruwais oil refinery complex after a scheduled maintenance shutdown. The Ruwais complex, which has capacity of 835,000 barrels per day, was shut down early this year, the ADNOC spokesman said.
And in late July 2019, ADNOC said its Ruwais refinery west cracker was offline for maintenance.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 241,030 tonnes in January 2021 versus 217,890 tonnes a year earlier. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
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