Platts clarifies guidelines for Atlantic LNG derivatives MOC

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, is clarifying the guidelines for the Atlantic LNG derivatives Market on Close assessment process.

Platts will publish bids, offers and interest to trade from approved participants for DES Northwest Europe derivatives in line with the following editorial standards and guidelines as part of its MOC process.

For more information on the counterparty review process, please visit https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/our-methodology/participation-review. Entities that wish to participate in the MOC should contact pricegroup@spglobal.com.

SUBMITTING BIDS, OFFERS AND INTENTIONS TO TRADE: Buyers and sellers must submit all outright, time spread, JKM/NWE and NWE/TTF spread bids and offers with complete information to Platts editors by phone, instant message or email before 4.10 pm London time. Buyers and sellers may withdraw their bids or offers at any time during the MOC by communicating the same to Platts editors, so long as interest in trading against the published bid or offer has not already been received by Platts. Counterparties must clearly communicate their interest to trade a published bid or offer to Platts editors. Bids or offers that are traded in the MOC may be repeated at the same or a less competitive price.

TIMING AND INCREMENTS: Buyers and sellers may improve the price of their published bids and offers by a minimum of 1 cent/MMBtu and a maximum of 10 cents/MMBtu every 60 seconds in the MOC.

Following any trade, there will be 60 seconds to rebid or re-offer. Price changes can be made up to 4.29 pm, followed by a one minute period where no price changes are able to be made to bids or offers. The MOC process will end at 4.30 pm London time. A rebid or re-offer following a trade in the last minute prior to the close of the MOC process will trigger an extension period till 4.31 pm, in order to adequately test that bid or offer.

VOLUME: Market participants are able to bid or offer NWE LNG derivatives at a minimum size of five lots (one lot is equivalent to 10,000 MMBtu), and multiples thereof, in the MOC process.

CREDIT AND TRADING TERMS: Transactions for NWE LNG swaps reported in the MOC are typically bilateral trades between counterparties, and should reflect their standard credit and trading terms. Subsequent to Platts publishing an expression of interest to trade a bid or offer, companies must communicate directly with each other to consummate the trade and confirm the same to Platts. Participants need to demonstrate ability to trade bilaterally in the MOC.

Counterparties are expected to perform on trades with counterparties in the MOC based on their typical bilateral trading and credit terms that have been applied and accepted by both counterparties in the open market.

BACKUP LINE ON CLEARED INSTRUMENTS:

Any company submitting a bid or offer that can only be traded on a cleared basis, and which would been to be processed as a block cleared derivative before final confirmation, should state as such in their bid or offer at the time of submitting for publication.

Platts started publishing daily assessments for DES NWE LNG derivative assessments that settle against the monthly average of its daily physical DES NWE LNG Marker assessment (Code: AASXU00) from July 29, 2022 (https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/our-methodology/subscriber-notes/072922-platts-launches-des-nwe-lng-derivative-assessments).

Please send any comments, questions or feedback to lngeditorialteam@spglobal.com and pricegroup@spglobal.com.

For written comments, please provide a clear indication if comments are not intended for publication by Platts for public viewing. Platts will consider all comments received and will make comments not marked as confidential available upon request.