OREANDA-NEWS. September 20, 2013. In Listvyanka, the Irkutsk region, at the 23rd session of the Headquarters for Joint Investigations of Violations of the Antimonopoly Law of the CIS Member-States, Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) Anatoly Golommolzin presented a “Draft FAS Report on the results of the Work of the International Working Group for Studying Pricing on the Markets of Oil and Oil Products and the Methods of their Performance”.

Deputy Head of FAS emphasized the importance for ongoing monitoring of stocks and prices on wholesale and retail markets of oil products, pointing out that Russia, Austria, the US, Ukraine and some other countries formed efficient monitoring systems.

For instance, in Russia information regarding the level and price behavior obtained through monitoring becomes available to the general public and is forwarded to the President and the Government of the Russian fro the purposes of developing the national policy.

The report pays special attention to global informational-and-analytical agencies, whose products serve as the guidelines for trading on the markets of oil and oil products as well as derivatives.

“Even small price distortions published by an information agency can have an enormous impact upon the real prices for oil and oil products and harm market participants”, pointed out Anatoly Golommolzin.

The report includes analysis of the efforts of G20 to assess the impact of informational agencies upon performance and transparency of the markets of oil and oil products. The International Organization of Securities Commissions -IOSCO (an organization of financial regulators from different countries) summarized its multi-year efforts in 11 recommendations on the activities of global price agencies. In particular, IOSCO emphasized the need to minimize selective reporting of prices and transactions volumes, provide accurate information about the market and create transparent procedures for market price indices.

A special section of the report focuses on developing commercial infrastructure of the markets of oil and oil products based on the Russia’s experience.

“To a considerable extent, oil products markets have similar structural features: vertically-integrated oil companies, collective dominance of large players and influence of the global markets upon the national ones”, said Anatoly Golommolzin.

Russia has finalized the regulatory framework that sets the requirements for setting market prices through exchange trading with oil products. The final stage was singing a joint order by FAS and the Ministry of Energy obligating large oil companies to sell some of their oil products through exchange trading.