Guidelines for European ETBE barges in eWindow from April 20

Effective April 20, 2020, S&P Global Platts will launch Northwest European ETBE barges loading FOB basis Amsterdam-Rotterdam and ETBE differentials to MTBE in the eWindow communication tool for its Market on Close assessment process.

From that date, Platts will publish bids, offers and intentions to trade in its MOC process for ETBE barges and differentials on the eWindow platform. Indications from market participants received by Platts via instant messenger, telephone or other acceptable means will also be published on eWindow. Headlines automatically generated by eWindow will appear on Platts Biofuel Alert page 1, using new short-form language. Here is a typical example of an automatically-generated headline: "Platts ETBE NWE Brg MW, Company A bids $100.00 for 1."

Certain guidelines that are applied to publishing bids, offers and intentions to trade during the MOC process will be updated to reflect efficiencies associated with the addition of eWindow as a communication tool, which are summarized below:

TIMING: The cut-off for placing bids or offers each day in eWindow will be 16:05:00:000 London time. For entities that choose to communicate bids and offers for publication to a Platts editor, the cut-off will remain 16:00:00:00 London time to ensure sufficient time to analyze information before publication.

INCREMENTABILITY: Bids and offers may be improved by up to $1/mt every 20 seconds. Repeat bids and offers should be communicated through eWindow within 30 seconds of a transaction being reported. For entities that choose to communicate bids and offers for publication to a Platts editor, the manual incrementability rule of up to $1/mt per 1 minute will apply. Details of this can be found in a separate subscriber note here plts.co

BID/OFFER FREEZE: For bids and offers published using the eWindow communication tool, there will be no price freeze, meaning that prices may change until the close of the MOC process at 16:30:00:999 London time. As previously, any bid or offer may be withdrawn so long as no interest to trade has been expressed. For entities that choose to send bids and offers for publication to a Platts editor through other communication tools, a freeze of two minutes after 16:28:00:00 London time will remain.

EXTENSION: To further test the repeatability of a transaction, when a price change or repeat bid/offer is communicated to Platts between 16:29:40:000 and 16:30:00:999, a one-minute extension will apply for those repeated indications, with a market close extended to 16:31:00:999.

LAYCANS: Platts has standardized the way in which bids and offers are published in its MOC process to fixed five-day periods within the 3-15 (Monday-Tuesday) or 5-15 (Wednesday-Friday) days forward assessment period. These are labeled progressively as: Front-end (FE), indicating the front five-day laycan; mid-window (MW), the middle five-day laycan; back-end (BE), the last five-day laycan.

VOLUME: Platts will continue to publish bids and offers for the standard quantity of 1,000 mt reflected in the assessments. These can be expressed in multiples of up to 5 x 1,000 mt.

MOC CONTACT DETAILS: Market participants may find the following contact details useful for the MOC: ICE IM: Platts_EU_MTBE Email: PL_PETCHEMS_LN@spglobal.com