By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, Sept. 14 -- New York Mercantile Exchange officials will make a second attempt to reopen trade of all major futures contracts Friday afternoon through a new internet-based version of its access system.
Officials reported the extended "beta test" of the new internet-based access system was "going very well" Friday morning and that they intended to have a 2-hour electronic trading session sometime in the afternoon.
Initial plans for a 2-hour electronic trading session Thursday afternoon (OGJ Online, Sept. 13, 2001) were abandoned "due to safety precautions" at the New York facility, officials said.
NYMEX was scheduled to launch the new internet-based trading system early this month, but at the end of August officials announced a delay so that members of the exchange could complete preparations. The exchange's previous after-hours electronic trading -- starting at 4 p.m. EDT Sunday-Friday and continuing all night -- was not done through the internet.
The session proposed for Friday will include trade in futures contracts for US benchmark and North Sea Brent crude and US contracts for natural gas, gasoline, home heating oil, propane, electricity, gold, silver, and other metals, said officials.
There was little change in trade of North Sea Brent crude futures Thursday on the International Petroleum Exchange in London.
The October Brent contract closed at $28.10/bbl, up 8¢ for the day after trading in a range of $27.74-$28.18/bbl. Aside from the strengthening of the British pound against the US dollar, the October natural gas contract was essentially unchanged at the equivalent of $3.08/Mcf Thursday on the IPE.
The average price for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' basket of seven crudes gained 23¢ to $26.23/bbl Thursday.
Meanwhile, the initial panic that caused a sharp spike in fuel prices in some areas of the US immediately after the terrorist attacks Tuesday appeared to have dissipated. The American Automobile Association (AAA) said the average US pump price for self-serve unleaded gasoline had increased only 0.8¢ to $1.54/gal this week.
There were confirmed reports that some stations had hiked pump prices as high as $5-$7/gal as concerned motorists lined up to fill their tanks late Tuesday.
"It was to be expected that a few gasoline station owners and a limited number of motorists might over-react to the terrible news," said Susan Pikrallidas, AAA vice-president of public affairs. "Both were probably concerned about the security of the nation's gasoline distribution system when news of the attacks first became known," she said.
The US has inventories of oil and refined products to satisfy its immediate needs and the distribution system for those materials is not in danger, said industry consultants at Purvin & Gertz Inc., Houston.
Although OPEC members began implementing their latest production cutback of 1 million b/d on Sept. 1, they exceeded their previous production quota by 890,000 b/d in July and by 700,000 to 1 million b/d in early August, said Kenneth D. Miller, senior principal for the firm. Non-OPEC production also was up more than 500,000 b/d above year-ago levels in July, he said.
"In this environment of uncertainty, hoarding can result in further volatility. Thailand, for example, announced that it would temporarily halt exports and build strategic supplies," Miller said.
However, OPEC's official production quota gives it spare production capacity of nearly 5.5 million b/d. That, said Miller, is "an important figure in this time of market concerns about supply issues."
"The long-term impacts (of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC) may take years to unfold," he said.
Government officials in Jakarta said destruction of the World Trade Center in New York raised concerns about the fate of documents on file there related to Indonesia's liquefied natural gas (LNG) deals.
They are trying to determine what happened to those documents, which were held by the LNG trustee borrowing agency at its office in one of the towers that collapsed after being struck by a hijacked airliner Tuesday. However, they claimed business would not be adversely affected by the loss of those documents.