Dubai Sets May Oil at 70 Cent Discount to Oman Crude Futures
February 23, 2012, 2:28 AM ESTBy Anthony DiPaola
(Updates with discount in second paragraph.)
Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Dubai kept the differential used to determine the cost of its oil shipments unchanged for May and at the steepest discount since the Persian Gulf emirate began pricing its exports against the Oman Crude Futures contract.
May shipments will sell at a discount of 70 cents a barrel to the Oman crude price that will be determined through trading on the Dubai Mercantile Exchange, according to an e-mail from the emirate’s Department of Petroleum Affairs today.
Oman sets its official selling price based on trading on the DME, an exchange part owned by that country’s sovereign wealth fund and by Chicago-based CME Group Inc. Those two shareholders said this week the will invest an undisclosed amount in the DME, boosting their holdings.
Dubai, which owns a stake in the DME through a government- run investment fund, began pricing its high-sulfur crude in relation to the Oman variety in September 2009. The DME is seeking to establish the Oman contract as a more widely adopted benchmark among Middle Eastern producers.
--Editors: Alexander Kwiatkowski, Mike Anderson
To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net
