The significant need for risk management tools in the energy market because of credit concerns and the loss of so many energy merchants and proprietary trading platforms has led to the apparent success of the New York Mercantile Exchange’s ClearPort trading and clearing system. In its first year of operation, the system has cleared three million off-exchange energy futures contracts, Nymex said on Thursday.

Since the system was launched, it has cleared 25.7 million MWh of electricity, 7.33 quadrillion British thermal units (Btus) of natural gas (7.1 Tcf), and three million barrels of crude oil with a total notional value of $34.5 billion, according to Nymex.

“From the start, our priority has been to satisfy the most important need of our energy merchant class of customers to mitigate counterparty credit exposure,” said Exchange President J. Robert Collins Jr. “Clearing off-exchange products was an innovative step, which not only enabled us to establish a much closer relationship with our customer base, but also led to the introduction of a suite of services under the umbrella of the Nymex ClearPort platform, including off-exchange trade confirmations and virtually 24-hour trading in a wide range of non-traditional futures contracts.”

More than 200 companies are registered to clear trades from a product slate of 60 energy futures contracts that replicate popular derivatives transactions for natural gas basis, refined products, crude oil and electricity products plus the Exchange’s financially settled Henry Hub natural gas swaps and West Texas Intermediate crude oil calendar swaps. Open interest as of the close of business Wednesday was 7.5 million MWh of electricity, 1.88 quadrillion Btus of natural gas and 1.8 million barrels of crude oil.

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