WIXLIB

world. It also opened access to a wider set of market participants and allowed the development of a largenumber of trading instruments both on regulated exchanges and over the counter.Physical delivery of crude oil is organised either through the spot (cash) market or through long-termcontracts. The spot market is used by transacting parties to buy and sell crude oil not covered by longterm contractual arrangements and applies often to one-off transactions. Given the logistics oftransporting oil, spot cargoes for immediate delivery are rare. Instead, there is an important element offorwardness in spot transactions. The parties can either agree on the price at the time of agreement, inwhich case the sport transaction becomes closer to a „forward‟ contract. More often though, transactingparties link the pricing of an oil cargo to the time of loading.Long-term contracts are negotiated bilaterally between buyers and sellers for the delivery of a series of oilshipments over a specified period of time, usually one or two years. They specify among other things, thevolumes of crude oil to be delivered, the delivery schedule, the actions to be taken in case of default, andabove all the method that should be used in calculating the price of an oil shipment. Price agreements areusually concluded on the method of formula pricing which links the price of a cargo in long-termcontracts to a market (spot) price. Formula pricing has become the basis of the oil pricing system.Formula pricing has two main advantages. Crude oil is not a homogenous commodity. There are varioustypes of internationally traded crude oil with different qualities and characteristics which have a bearingon refining yields. Thus, different crudes fetch different prices. Given the large variety of crude oils, theprice of a particular type is usually set at a discount or at a premium to marker or reference prices, oftenreferred to as benchmarks. The differentials are adjusted periodically to reflect differences in the qualityof crudes as well as the relative demand and supply of the various types of crudes. Another advantage offormula pricing is that it increases pricing flexibility. When there is a lag between the date at which acargo is bought and the date of arrival at its destination, there is a price risk. Transacting parties usuallyshare this risk through the pricing formula. Agreements are often made for the date of pricing to occuraround the delivery date.At the heart of formulae pricing is the identification of the price of key „physical‟ benchmarks, such asWest Texas Intermediate (WTI), Dated Brent and Dubai-Oman. The benchmark crudes are a centralfeature of the oil pricing system and are used by oil companies and traders to price cargoes under longterm contracts or in spot market transactions; by futures exchanges for the settlement of their financialcontracts; by banks and companies for the settlement of derivative instruments such as swap contracts;and by governments for taxation purposes.Few features of these physical benchmarks stand out. Markets with relatively low volumes of productionsuch as WTI, Brent, and Dubai set the price for markets with higher volumes of production elsewhere inthe world. Despite the high level of volumes of production in the Gulf, these markets remain illiquid:there is limited spot trading in these markets, no forwards or swaps (apart from Dubai), and no liquidfutures market since crude export contracts include destination and resale restrictions which limit tradingoptions. While the volume of production is not a sufficient condition for the emergence of a benchmark, itis a necessary condition for a benchmark‟s success. As markets become thinner and thinner, the pricediscovery process becomes more difficult. Oil price reporting agencies cannot observe enough genuinearms-length deals. Furthermore, in thin markets, the danger of squeezes and distortions increases and as aresult prices could then become less informative and more volatile thereby distorting consumption andproduction decisions. So far the low and continuous decline in the physical base of existing benchmarkshas been counteracted by including additional crude streams in an assessed benchmark. This had theeffect of reducing the chance of squeezes as these alternative crudes could be used for delivery against thecontract. Although such short-term solutions have been successful in alleviating the problem of squeezes,observers should not be distracted from some key questions: What are the conditions necessary for theemergence of successful benchmarks in the most physically liquid market? Would a shift to assessing7

price in these markets improve the price discovery process? Such key questions remain heavily underresearched in the energy literature and do not feature in the consumer-producer dialogue.The emergence of the non-OECD as the main source of growth in global oil demand will only increasethe importance of such questions. One of the most important shifts in oil market dynamics in recent yearshas been the shift in oil trade flows to Asia: this may have long-term implications on pricing benchmarks.Questions are already being raised whether Dubai still constitutes an appropriate benchmark for pricingcrude oil exports to Asia given its thin physical base or whether new benchmarks are needed to reflectmore accurately the recent shift in trade flows and the rise in prominence of the Asian consumer.Unlike the futures market where prices are observable in real time, the reported prices of physicalbenchmarks are „identified‟ or „assessed‟ prices. Assessments are needed in opaque markets such as crudeoil where physical transactions concluded between parties cannot be directly observed by outsiders.Assessments are also needed in illiquid markets where there are not enough representative deals or whereno transactions are concluded. These assessments are carried out by oil pricing reporting agencies(PRAs), the two most important of which are Platts and Argus. While PRAs have been an integral part ofthe oil pricing system, especially since the shift to the market-related pricing system in 1986, their rolehas recently been attracting considerable attention. In the G20 summit in Korea in November 2010, theG20 leaders called for a more detailed analysis on „how the oil spot market prices are assessed by oilprice reporting agencies and how this affects the transparency and functioning of oil markets‟. In its latestreport in November 2010, IOSCO points that „the core concern with respect to price reporting agencies isthe extent to which the reported data accurately reflects the cash market in question‟. PRAs do not onlyact as „a mirror to the trade‟. In their attempt to identify the price that reflects accurately the market valueof an oil barrel, PRAs enter into the decision-making territory which can influence market structure.What they choose to do is influenced by market participants and market structure while they in turninfluence the trading strategies of the various participants. New markets and contracts may emerge tohedge the risks arising from some PRAs‟ decisions. To evaluate the role of PRAs in the oil market, it isimportant to look at three inter-related dimensions: the methodology used in indentifying the oil price; theaccuracy of price assessments; and the internal measures that PRAs implement to protect the integrity andensure an efficient assessment process. There is a fundamental difference in the methodology and in thephilosophy underlying the price assessment process between the various PRAs. As a result, differentagencies may produce different prices for the same benchmark. This raises the issue of which methodproduces a more accurate price assessment. Given that assessed prices underlie long-term contracts, spottransactions and derivatives instruments, even small differences in price assessments between PRAs haveimportant implications on exporters‟ revenues and financial flows between parties in financial contracts.In the last two decades or so, many financial layers (paper markets) have emerged around crude oilbenchmarks. They include the forward market (in Brent and Dubai), swaps, futures, and options. Some ofthe instruments such as futures and options are traded on regulated exchanges such as ICE and CMEGroup, while other instruments, such as swaps, options and forward contracts, are traded bilaterally overthe counter (OTC). Nevertheless, these financial layers are highly interlinked through the process ofarbitrage and the development of instruments that links the various layers together. Over the years, thesemarkets have grown in terms of size, liquidity, sophistication and have attracted a diverse set of playersboth physical and financial. These markets have become central for market participants wishing to hedgetheir risk and to bet on oil price movements. Equally important, these financial layers have becomecentral to the oil price identification process.At the early stages of the current pricing system, linking prices to benchmarks in formulae pricingprovided producers and consumers with a sense of comfort that the price is grounded in the physicaldimension of the market. This implicitly assumes that the process of identifying the price of benchmarkscan be isolated from financial layers. However, this is far from reality. The analysis in this report showsthat the different layers of the oil market form a complex web of links, all of which play a role in the pricediscovery process. The information derived from financial layers is essential for identifying the price8

level of the benchmark. In the Brent market, the oil price in the forward market is sometimes priced as adifferential to the price of the Brent futures contract using the Exchange for Physicals (EFP) market. Theprice of Dated Brent or North Sea Dated in turn is priced as a differential to the forward market throughthe market of Contract for Differences (CFDs), another swaps market. Given the limited number ofphysical transactions and hence the limited amount of deals that can be observed by oil reportingagencies, the value of Dubai, the main benchmark used for pricing crude oil exports to East Asia, is oftenassessed by using the value of differentials in the very liquid OTC Dubai/Brent swaps market. Thus, onecould argue that without these financial layers it would not be possible to „discover‟ or „identify‟ oilprices in the current oil pricing system. In effect, crude oil prices are jointly or co-determined in bothlayers, depending on differences in timing, location and quality of crude oil.Since physical benchmarks constitute the pricing basis of the large majority of physical transactions,some observers claim that derivatives instruments such as futures, forwards, options and swaps derivetheir value from the price of these physical benchmarks, i.e., the prices of these physical benchmarksdrive the prices in paper markets. However, this is a gross over-simplification and does not accuratelyreflect the process of crude oil price formation. The issue of whether the paper market drives the physicalor the other way around is difficult to construct theoretically and test empirically and requires furtherresearch.The report also calls for broadening the empirical research to include the trading strategies of physicalplayers. In recent years, the futures markets have attracted a wide range of financial players includingswap dealers, pension funds, hedge funds, index investors, technical traders, and high net worthindividuals. There are concerns that these financial players and their trading strategies could move the oilprice away from the „true‟ underlying fundamentals. The fact remains however that the participants inmany of the OTC markets such as forward markets and CFDs which are central to the price discoveryprocess are mainly „physical‟ and include entities such as refineries, oil companies, downstreamconsumers, physical traders, and market makers. Financial players such as pension funds and indexinvestors have limited presence in many of these markets. Thus, any analysis limited to non-commercialparticipants in the futures market and their role in the oil price formation process is incomplete and alsopotentially misleading.The report also makes the distinction between trade in price differentials and trade in price levels. Itshows that trades in the levels of the oil price rarely take place in the layers surrounding the physicalbenchmarks. We postulate that the price level of the main crude oil benchmarks is set in the futuresmarkets; the financial layers such as swaps and forwards set the price differentials depending on quality,location and timing. These differentials are then used by oil reporting agencies to identify the price levelof a physical benchmark. If the price in the futures market becomes detached from the underlyingbenchmark, the differentials adjust to correct for this divergence through a web of highly interlinked andefficient markets. Thus, our analysis reveals that the level of the crude oil price, which consumers,producers and their governments are most concerned with, is not the most relevant feature in the currentpricing system. Instead, the identification of price differentials and the adjustments in these differentialsin the various layers underlie the basis of the current crude oil pricing system. By trading differentials,market participants limit their exposure to the risks of time, location grade and volume. Unfortunately,this fact has received little attention and the issue of whether price differentials between different marketsshowed strong signs of adjustment in the 2008-2009 price cycle has not yet received due attention in theempirical literature.But this leaves us with a fundamental question: what determines the price level of a certain benchmark inthe first place? The pricing system reflects how the oil market functions: if price levels are set in thefutures market and if m

1 An Anatomy of the Crude Oil Pricing System. Bassam Fattouh1 WPM 40 . January 2011 . 1 Bassam Fattouh is the Director of the Oil and Middle East Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies; Research Fellow at St Antony‟s College, Oxford U