OREANDA-NEWS. On 29 April 2008 was announced, that effective May 16th, 2008 new specification of futures on Urals oil comes into force. The specification was approved by RTS Board of Directors on February 26th, 2008.

The reviewed specification comes into effect for all contracts starting from the June contract (UR-06.08). Futures contract on Urals oil with settlement in May will be settled in accordance with the previous version of the specification.

The essence of the reviewed specification lies in the changed formula for calculation of the contract settlement price. Now the settlement price will be calculated in accordance with the formula ICE Brent Index + average value of PLATTS Urals Differential for 2 weeks.

According to Roman Goryunov, RTS CEO, implementation of the reviewed specification will facilitate attracting various groups of market participants and increasing liquidity of the contract as the new specification allows raising effectiveness of arbitrage operations performed between the Russian and the world oil markets.