Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE), a leading global provider of data, technology, and market infrastructure, and home to the broadest range of benchmarks to support the liberalization of natural gas, today announced plans to launch TTF Natural Gas Calendar Spread Options (CSO) on December 11, 2023, subject to regulatory approval.
TTF is the global benchmark for natural gas and TTF CSOs allow market participants to take a position on the expected price differentials between TTF natural gas futures with different delivery months. ICE expects to list TTF CSOs for a range of delivery months, including 1-month to 6-month and 12-month contracts.
“By expanding our TTF offering to include CSOs we are giving our customers an additional tool to address natural gas price fluctuations as well as the opportunity to leverage physical assets effectively to manage seasonal trends and natural gas storage costs,” said Gordon Bennett, Managing Director, Utility Markets at ICE. “ICE provides customers with the largest marketplace in the world to trade energy and environmental derivatives, providing price signals integral to managing risk.”
Following a record third quarter this year, open interest (OI) in TTF natural gas futures and options is up 58% year-over-year (y/y) at 2.8 million contracts with TTF seeing record participation, and OI out to December 2032. In ICE TTF options, OI is up 84% at 1.3 million contracts.
TTF CSOs will become part of ICE’s broader global commodities portfolio, which includes the benchmarks ICE Brent crude, Gasoil, ICE Dubai (Platts), Henry Hub, Canadian AECO, U.K. NBP, and ICE JKM LNG (Platts), where OI is at a record 56.3 million contracts, up 19% y/y.
