The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) aims to build liquidity on the new international exchange for Murban crude oil, which will be based at the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), and to make Murban futures contract an alternative for Brent.

“You are not born a benchmark, you become one… we need to build trust and align elements which make it reliable and transparent and for the liquidity to build up,” said Philippe Khoury, Group Head of Trading at ADNOC.

“The trust part and the derivatives part are where we have to show our strengths going forward,” he told ADNOC Trading Forum on Tuesday, held as part of ADIPEC 2019.

“The physical part of the Murban is much more powerful than the other crude proposed, in terms of the consistency of quality and quantity which makes it extremely resilient when it comes to making its way into the benchmark road. We still have to demonstrate over time that the community can trust this crude to become a benchmark,” he added.

ADNOC’s Khoury noted that the company has a deeply rooted strategy of going from upstream to downstream, extending its reach and extracting full potential of its assets.

“It was obvious that the Murban was the natural alternative to Brent and WTI. You do not find another crude in the Middle East that has simultaneously all the conditions that makes the Murban a pricing marker,” he said.

Oil majors BP, Total and Shell would be partners in the new exchange ICE Futures Abu Dhabi (IFAD) that is set to be launched in early 2020, global exchange operator, Intercontinental Exchange, which will be launching the new exchange in ADGM, said. 

(Writing by Nada Al Rifai nada.rifai@refinitiv.com, editing by Seban Scaria)

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