OREANDA-NEWS. July 21, 2014. Expert Councils at the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) on developing competition on the markets of gas, oil and oil products and for protecting competition on the market of financial services (the Section on organized trading) had a joint meeting. It focused on developing exchange trading with liquefied hydrocarbon gases in the Russian Federation.

Attendees included representatives of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, the Bank of Russia as well as “Gazprom Gazenergoset” OJSC and “St Petersburg International Mercantile Commodities Exchange” CJSC (“SPIMEX”).

Opening the meeting, Deputy Head of FAS, Anatoly Golomolzin, turned to the experience of organized trading with oil and oil products. It is placing such products at exchange that has enabled to significantly increase pricing transparency, which is bound to be an argument in favour of further extrapolating such positive experience.

The Head of FAS Department for Control over Fuel-and-Energy Complex, Dmitry Makhonin, made a presentation on developing organized trading with liquefied hydrocarbon gases (LHG) in the Russian Federation. He gave a detailed account of the history of preparing and conducting organized trading with oil and oil products, and informed the audience about the findings of LHG market analysis in 2011 – the first six months of 2013, completed by FAS. Dmitry Makhonin paid special attention to the planned as well as already made changes to various normative legal acts of the Russian Federation designed to establish the legislative framework for organized trading with LHG.

The second speaker was Director of the Oil and Gas Processing Department of the Ministry of Energy, М. Gryaznov. He focused on the changes to be introduced to the joint order of FAS and the Ministry of Energy “On Approving the Lowest Value of Oil Products Sold through Exchange and the Requirements to Exchange Trading through which Oil Products Transactions are Concluded by Economic Entities with the Dominant Position on the Televant Markets”.

Director of the Bank of Russia’s Department for Securities and Goods Markets, L. Selyutina, devoted her presentation to the transition of the Bank of Russia to exercising the functions of a financial market regulator concerning, in particular, organized trading sites for trading with LHG.

Then Deputy Director General of “Gazprom Gazenergoset” OJSC on Sales, D. Mironov, discussed the accumulated experience of selling LHG for the household needs through an e-trading site. The audience was especially interested in a real example of a closed auction at Eoil.ru.

Next speaker, Vice-President of “SPIMEX” CJSC, M. Temnichenko, discussed the main issues of concern for representatives of business community. Based on the experience of organized trading with oil and oil products and appealing to the main points made by the previous speaker, he proved that exchange trading with LHG is not only technically possible but it is preferable for satisfying the needs of LHG buyers and sellers in price data representativeness.

His colleague, the Chairman of the Board of the “Oil Products” Section at “SPIMEX” CJSC and General Director of “ICON Trading”, D. Gusev, discussed the problems of launching organized LHG trading in more detail and gave several aggregated data on the scope of production and LHG exchange trading that already take place in the Russian Federation.

Other speakers included representatives of “Central Dispatching Department of Fuel Energy Complex”, “Lukoil” OJSC, “Sibur Holding” OJSC, “NOVATEK” OJSC, “Impexneftekhim” Ltd. and “Informatsionnie Sistemy” Ltd.

Summing up the meeting, Anatoly Golomolzin thanked all speakers and expressed confidence that by the end of 2014 the plans would be implemented for organized trading with LHG for the household needs, and in the quality of gas-engine fuel.

“FAS intends to continue discussing organized trading with petrochemical LHG in order to draft the relevant proposals. Therefore, a dialogue and further expanding cooperation with representatives of business community on such multifaceted issues are very important”, emphasized Anatoly Golomolzin.