SUBSCRIBER NOTE: Platts to expand intraday Cash BFOE assessments

Platts will expand its intraday assessments for cash BFOE to add new times of day for publication and inter-month spreads, starting on November 1, 2016, in response to increased interest from the market. As part of this expansion, Platts will publish intraday assessments for M1, M2, and M3 BFOE. These assessments will be published alongside intraday assessments for M1/M2 and M2/M3 BFOE spreads.

New intraday assessments will reflect the prevailing value for Cash BFOE at 10:30, 12:30 and 14:30 London time every publishing day. On settlement day itself for the ICE Brent futures contract, Platts would additionally publish an assessment at 19:30 London time. This would be a change from current intraday publishing times at 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00 London time, and on settlement day every hour from 09:00 to 19:00 London time.

ASSESSMENT PROCESS: Platts will publish bids, offers and intentions to trade for cash BFOE partials or cargoes for each intraday assessment timestamp. Platts will accept new bids or offers for publications up to five minutes before each timestamp, with subsequent incrementability and expiry as per the existing cash BFOE Market on Close process.

SETTLEMENT DAY BFOE AT 1930 LONDON TIME: Since all partial cargoes will have converged and settled by 1630 London time on expiry day, the 1930 assessment will reflect the value of full, 600,000 barrel cash BFOE cargoes trading in the period after the market close in London.

BACKGROUND: Platts will retain its existing methodology for assessing the benchmark cash BFOE market. Bids and offers for Cash BFOE published during the Platts Market on Close assessment process reflect BFOE transactions of 100,000 barrels (partials). If a single buyer and a single seller transact six partials of 100,000 barrels with each other, the transactions converge into one physical Cash BFOE cargo of 600,000 barrels. If, after all convergences have been completed, any two counterparts have outstanding partials that do not amount to a 600,000-barrel cargo, those partials are financially settled.

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