Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME), the premier international energy futures and commodities exchange in the Middle East, announced a new open interest record for its flagship Oman Crude Oil Futures contract of 31,492 lots, which is equivalent to 31.5 million barrels of Omani crude oil. The previous record was set on 28 Aug 2015 when open interest was 27,107 lots.

The record highlights the increase appetite for commercial players to trade on the exchange and get their crude oil delivered through DME due to its transparent trading platform and its state-of-the-art delivery mechanism that allows DME to deliver between 15 and 22 million barrels every month from Mina Al Fahal port in Oman.

Owain Johnson, Managing Director, DME said, “The new record today indicates that our offering is highly appreciated by major global commercial players. We have witnessed strong physical delivery volumes recently and this is due to the ever-growing appetite among oil traders to trade the DME Oman contract, both to participate in price discovery and also in physical delivery through the exchange.”

“An increase in open interest is the best indicator of the health of a futures contract and so we are delighted to set a new record. Trading volumes also continue to grow strongly on the Exchange, so DME has made an excellent start to 2016,” he added.

DME recently registered a 30 per cent increase year-on-year in physical delivery volumes with a total of 229,039,000 barrels shipped during 2015 compared to 176,514,000 barrels in 2014. This impressive performance made it the best year in the history of the exchange for physical delivery reinforcing DME’s critical role as a key global energy trading platform.