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New York Mercantile Exchange Announces Plans For OTC Trading Platform

Date 12/12/2002

The New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc., today announced plans to introduce a trading platform designed for over-the-counter (OTC) energy market participants in January, with beta tests beginning next week.

Contracts that will be made available through the system will include those designed by the Exchange to replicate the most commonly traded OTC products.

Trading will be available on the system from 7 PM Sunday and 3:15 PM on Monday through Thursday until 2:30 PM the following day, reflecting the trading hours for the Exchange's traditional futures and options markets.

Exchange President J. Robert Collins, Jr., said, "By offering the industry a platform that brings the neutrality, integrity, and expertise of the New York Mercantile Exchange to the OTC trading arena, alongside our existing OTC clearing and confirmation services, further expands the ability of OTC market participants to operate with the protection of the exchange, creating a true 'one-stop shop' for energy trading and risk management services. With this latest service, we have taken yet another step closer to offering the energy industry the most efficient and comprehensive portal for price discovery and trade execution."

In addition to the NYMEX OTC platform, the Exchange also announced a strategic linkage to TradeCapture, Inc., that will enable market participants to trade and clear Exchange contracts through that well-established OTC trading platform.

Vincent Annunziata, chief executive officer of TradeCapture, Inc., said, "We are delighted to be able to offer our customers expanded flexibility along with direct access to the largest, most liquid, and most experienced energy clearinghouse in the world."

Founded in 1997, TradeCapture, Inc., is a leading global provider of web-enabled solutions designed and developed for companies in the field of commodity trading and transaction management. TradeCapture's flagship product is the integrated commodity trading system, ICTS Symphony™, for straight-through processing of commodities transactions. TradeCapture's B2B Exchange Tools function as an "off the shelf" electronic exchange to trade physical commodities, futures and related derivative products. Linked together, these two products provide a comprehensive front-end to back-end electronic solution for the commodities trading industry. TradeCapture is also a leading provider in the area of consulting services for commodity trading organizations, offering such services as outsourcing, systems integration/selection, and workflow analysis.

The New York Mercantile Exchange began offering clearing services on May 31 for 25 of the most commonly traded OTC instruments in crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, and electricity as the first step in its efforts to offer comprehensive OTC services to the energy industry. On November 15, it expanded to an additional 32 products in a broader range of energy markets that are also available for trading for a 90-minute session on NYMEX ACCESS®. There is currently open interest in 24 of the listed contracts, representing the broadest range of actively cleared products on any platform.