Platts to stop assessing Tapis swaps, cracks

Platts plans to discontinue its Asian price assessments of all Tapis paper swaps, including swaps for cracks between Tapis crude and naphtha, gasoil and jet fuel basis FOB Singapore.

These assessments appear on Platts Forward Curve-Asia, an add-on to Platts Global Alert. The last assessments of these derivatives will be published March 31, 2010.

Platts currently publishes a Tapis swaps forward curve on page 640, naphtha-Tapis crack swaps on 657, jet fuel/kero-Tapis crack swaps on 658 and gasoil-Tapis crack swaps on 659. These assessments also are in Platts Dispatch.

Platts has observed an almost total collapse in the liquidity of paper swaps trading of Tapis and derived instruments, in tandem with a decline in the spot availability of physical Tapis crude cargoes to near zero.

Based on subscriber demand, Platts will continue to publish fixed price assessments and Dated Brent-related differentials for physical Tapis crude, as published on PGA page 165, in Platts Crude Oil Marketwire and in Platts Dispatch.

Platts will also continue to publish the monthly Tapis official selling price (OSP) and Tapis premium, as currently published on PGA page 334.

Methodology for Platts' daily assessment of Tapis crude is available at http://platts.com/IM.Platts.Content/MethodologyReferences/MethodologySpecs/cr udeoilspecs.pdf.

Please email comments or questions to asia_crude@platts.com and pricegroup@platts.com.