In 2014, the Ministry of Energy to plan to sign a road map on the forming of the ESPO benchmark

In 2014, the Ministry of Energy plans to sign a road map on the forming of ESPO benchmark and the launch of stock oil trading, the Ministry reports in its plan till 2015.

The status of benchmark will allow Russian oil not to depend on Brent quotations, on basis of which the price of Russian oil is calculated now.

As it was reported earlier, according to the Head of the St. Petersburg International Commodity Exchange, Alexei Rybnikov, the grade of Russian oil ESPO has every reason and opportunities to become a benchmark, ie grade of oil, on basis of which quotes of other oil grades are calculated. He noted that the attraction of buyers to the new tools of the exchange should be the main ingredient in this process. Rybnikov believes that this process may take up to five years, and the first stage of this process should be legally secured (by the Russian Government’s order) OTC registration of spot oil transactions - oil companies should record all transactions for the sale of oil  in the country.