HOUSTON, June 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As announced May 9, 2012, Platts today expanded its offering of price assessments for Canadian crude oils with the launch of an assessment for Western Canadian Select, one of North America's largest heavy crude oil streams, as injected free on board (FOB) at Cushing, Oklahoma, a major storage area and delivery point for key crude oil futures contracts.

The new daily price assessment, known as the Platts Ex-Cushing Western Canadian Select (WCS), was today assessed at $70.78 per barrel (/b) and a $13.00/b discount to the July calendar month average (CMA) of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) light, sweet crude oil contract. The assessment reflects the end-of-day value as determined between buyer and seller in the open spot market. The assessment is published daily as an outright price and captures barrels to be lifted/injected one month out.

"The FOB Cushing WCS assessment is a daily spot assessment of Canadian crude at Cushing, where the reversed Seaway crude oil pipeline now originates. This assessment offers market players, including Canadian producers, an alternative to existing Canadian crude oil assessments," said Esa Ramasamy, editorial director, Americas oil market reporting, Platts. Platts is a leading global energy, petrochemicals and metals information provider and a foremost source of benchmark price references.

Cushing has increasingly attracted heightened market attention for varying reasons, including the fact that oil storage there reached a record 46.849 million barrels the week ending May 25 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Cushing inventories have been building ahead of the directional flow reversal of the Enbridge/Enterprise Seaway pipeline, which on May 17 began transporting crude oil from Cushing to Freeport, Texas.

Platts' decision to publish the new assessment followed consultation with a cross section of key market and industry participants.

The Platts Ex-Cushing WCS assessment expands and augments Platts' existing suite of Canadian crude oil price references begun in 2003 with its first assessments of Canadian heavy sour crude oils and the addition in 2006 of WCS ex-Hardisty, Alberta, Canada. Platts was the first independent price reporting organization to launch a daily price assessment for oil from the Bakken shale formation stretching across central United States and parts of Canada in May 2010.

The ex-Cushing WCS assessments employ the Platts Market-on-Close (MOC) oil methodology, a structured, highly-transparent price assessment process based on the principle that price is a function of time. The MOC process in oil identifies bid, offer and transaction data by company of origin and results in a time-sensitive end-of-trading-day daily price assessment. For more information on the methodology and quality-control guidelines, visit the methodology and specifications page of the Platts website.

Platts' full suite of Canadian crude oil assessments are published in Platts Global Alert, a real-time news service; and the publications Platts Crude Oil Marketwire, North American Crude Wire, and Platts Oilgram Price Report. For more information on crude oil, visit the Platts website at www.platts.com.

About Platts: Founded in 1909, Platts is a leading global provider of energy, petrochemicals and metals information and a premier source of benchmark prices for the physical and futures markets. Platts' news, pricing, analytics, commentary and conferences help customers make better-informed trading and business decisions and help the markets operate with greater transparency and efficiency. Customers in more than 150 countries benefit from Platts' coverage of the carbon emissions, coal, electricity, oil, natural gas, metals, nuclear power, petrochemical, and shipping markets. A division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), Platts is headquartered in New York with approximately 900 employees in more than 15 offices worldwide. Additional information is available at http://www.platts.com.

About The McGraw-Hill Companies: McGraw-Hill announced on September 12, 2011, its intention to separate into two public companies: McGraw-Hill Financial, a leading provider of content and analytics to global financial markets, and McGraw-Hill Education, a leading education company focused on digital learning and education services worldwide. McGraw-Hill Financial's leading brands include Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, S&P Capital IQ, S&P Indices, Platts energy information services and J.D. Power and Associates. With sales of $6.2 billion in 2011, the Corporation has approximately 23,000 employees across more than 280 offices in 40 countries. Additional information is available at http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/.

Contact:
Kathleen Tanzy
212-904-2860
Kathleen_tanzy@platts.com

SOURCE Platts

SOURCE: Platts