Oil product exchanges plan to boost turnover to 10% of domestic market by year-end
MOSCOW. March 30 (Interfax) - Russia's commodity exchanges plan to raise turnover in oil products to 10% of the domestic market by the end of 2010, the vice president of the Interregional Exchange of the Oil and Gas Complex (MBNK).
That will make it possible to provide representative price indicators for the domestic market, a key element in the regulatory effort to prevent oil company pricing abuses, MBNK Vice President Anton Karpov said at a roundtable at the Economic Development Ministry.
"Assuming current trends continue to the end of the year, we will reach sales volumes that trigger Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) requirements for maintaining indexes - more than 10% of the domestic market," Karpov said, adding that regulators ought to take into account price quotes on the exchanges now when they set the market indicators.
The three exchanges - MBNK, St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange and the St. Petersburg Exchange - currently account for 6%-7% of oil product volume, although the Energy Ministry believes the actual figure is higher - 10%-12%. A total of 1.237 million tonnes of oil products were sold through the exchanges in the first quarter this year, Karpov said.
FAS chief Igor Artemiev said in February that oil product trading on the exchange was insufficient to form objective market indicators and that they needed to be handling at least 15% of the total free turnover in oil products.
This year the FAS and the Energy Ministry submitted to the government several options for the formula for calculating fair prices on oil products, derived from global prices. The formula will be used until the appearance of representative price indicators on the domestic market.