Chinese Companies Express Interest in Russia's Urals Crude Futures Trade

Chinese firms are interested in trading futures for the Russian Urals crude oil.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Chinese companies are considering taking part in trading futures for the Russian Urals crude oil benchmark, St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX) Executive Vice President Mikhail Temnichenko said, as quoted by the Russian Kommersant newspaper on Monday.

"Chinese state oil companies are, in fact, interested in taking part in trading deliverable Urals futures, which we plan to launch in November."

SPIMEX expects to attract at least three of Russia's largest oil companies to trading oil futures by November, he added.

Currently, Urals is not traded on stock exchanges, and is mainly priced by market information agencies, such as Platts, based on the Brent-Urals differential. Russian energy companies and regulators have voiced growing concern over unfairly large discount differentials between the benchmarks. An independent pricing mechanism based on futures would provide a market-based platform for trading the commodity.

The issue is set to be discussed during a Russian-Chinese Intergovernmental Commission on Energy Cooperation meeting due to take place later this month.

"The sides agreed to look into the possible parameters and contract volumes which may base their pricing mechanisms on the results of St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX) deliverable exchange contracts trading results for exported oil," a protocol for the upcoming meeting said, as quoted by the newspaper.

SPIMEX ran its first trial trade in Russian export oil futures in November 2015. The futures are planned to be priced in dollars, with one contract's assets equivalent to 1,000 barrels. A minimum deliverable unit will amount to 720,000 barrels, according to the stock exchange.