Launched in 2007, the DME aims to become the crude oil pricing benchmark for the Asian market with its Oman Crude Oil contract, like the Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) North Sea Brent is to Europe and the New York Mercantile Exchange’s (NYMEX) West Texas Intermediate is to North America.
In the first half of 2007, Oman Investment Fund (OIF) acquired a stake in the DME, which was launched on 1 June of that year.
Two major events in 2008 that notably changed the DME’s shareholding structure; several trading firms and international financial institutions, namely Concord Energy, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Shell and Vitol, became shareholders of the DME, and NYMEX was acquired by the CME Group.
That meant that the Dubai crude oil selling price would become: In December 2010, NYMEX announced the launch of six DME Oman-linked contracts to complement the availability of trading instruments so as to help establish the benchmark.
Figures are from the DME website With over 144 million barrels delivered through the exchange in 2010 and more than 50 companies trading the contract regularly, it seems that the DME Oman oil benchmark has been accepted by market participants as a regulated and transparent benchmark for the East of Suez market.