The New York Mercantile Exchange said it will move electricitytrading from open outcry to the Nymex ACCESS electronic tradingsystem following the close of trading March 2. At the 4 p.m. startthat day of the ACCESS session, which marks the start of the March3 trading session, the Exchange will list all of its existingelectricity futures and options contracts for trading on the systemthrough 2:30 PM the next day. The contract will begin trading at 4PM Monday through Thursday evenings and will begin trading at 7p.m. Sundays.

Nymex electricity contract offerings are futures and optionsbased on delivery at the California-Oregon border; at Palo Verde,AZ; into the Cinergy transmission system; into the Entergytransmission system; as well as based on delivery at the westernhub of the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland interconnection.

Talk of Nymex moving the contracts to Access has been heardsince July (see Daily GPI July 23). Robert Levin, Nymex senior vicepresident for planning and development, then conceded the exchangewas examining various proposals to bring liquidity to thecontracts, particularly with an eye to bringing in more marketmakers. “The contracts themselves are fine, and so it’s a matterof, I think, supporting market-making and then getting back out tothe customer base, the commercials, and reinforcing with them whatwe’re doing and attract them back in. I think that’s pretty muchit.”

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