ICE Announces Plans To Introduce WTI Light Sweet Crude Oil Futures Contract - OTC WTI Bullet Swap To Convert To Futures

IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE), the leading electronic energy marketplace, today announced that ICE Futures will launch an electronically traded WTI crude futures contract beginning in February. The ICE West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude futures contract will begin trading on February 3, pending regulatory approval. ICE will convert the liquid over-the-counter WTI Crude Oil Bullet swap contract currently trading in ICE’s electronic OTC markets to the ICE WTI Crude futures contract. Upon launch, open interest in the bullet swap will be transferred to an equivalent open interest position in futures.

The addition of WTI crude futures brings the world’s two most significant crude oil benchmarks together on ICE’s widely distributed trading platform. WTI is the leading benchmark for crude prices in the United States, and Brent is the leading benchmark for pricing crude and refined products produced and consumed outside of the United States.

“Following the successful transition to electronic trading in our global futures business, we have seen great demand for an electronically traded WTI futures contract from a wide range of market participants,” said Jeffrey C. Sprecher, ICE’s Chairman and CEO. “With the tremendous amount of business that takes place on a daily basis in the global oil markets, we believe the new contract will complete an already robust offering on ICE’s liquid marketplace by providing rapid and reliable price discovery and execution for crude oil transactions.”

A fee waiver on execution will be in place for the ICE WTI Crude futures contract from launch through March 31, 2006. Thereafter, a contract execution fee of $0.70 per side will be in effect.

The ICE WTI Crude futures contract will trade continuously for 21 hours a day – from 1:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. local London time, or from 8:00 p.m. through 5:00 p.m. Eastern time the next day. Each crude futures contract is sized at 1,000 barrels, with the contract price quoted in U.S. dollars and cents per barrel. The minimum price fluctuation will be one cent per barrel, equivalent to a tick value of $10.00.

Since ICE Futures went fully electronic last April, its benchmark IPE Brent Crude futures and IPE Gas Oil futures contracts have experienced dramatic growth. Each of the top five months in exchange-wide volumes in ICE Futures’ 25-year history has occurred since the transition to fully electronic trading.

Crude oil is one of the world’s most widely used commodities and among the most widely traded commodities. Crude oil refers to petroleum in its raw form. Brent crude oil is named for the Brent oil field in the North Sea, off the coast of Britain. Crude oil becomes useful after refining, which produces numerous oil-based component products, including petroleum gas, gasoline, kerosene, gas oil, lubricating oils and residuals, among others.