TOKYO and SINGAPORE and LONDON, Nov. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Platts, the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets, confirmed that it will launch new assessments to reflect the value of lorry rack prices for a range of oil products for the Japanese market on December 12, 2016. These new assessments will be for gasoline, kerosene, gasoil, low-sulfur A fuel oil and high-sulfur A fuel oil.

The launch follows the conclusion of a formal consultation with market participants on September 30, 2016 to ensure the rack price assessments meet the specific needs of the Japanese market, and adhere to Japan industrial standard specifications as published by the Japanese Industrial Standard Committee, as well as Platts rigorous governance standards.

Anton Ferkov, Senior Managing Editor, Japan, S&P Global Platts said: "We are pleased to confirm our final methodology for the domestic Japanese rack oil markets and would like to thank all the market participants who provided feedback as part of the consultation process. We listened to this feedback and made a number of changes to the draft methodology, particularly around reducing the minimum tradable cargo size, products portfolio, and loading locations to ensure our final methodology is easily accessible to local Japanese refiners, traders and dealers".

Platts assesses prices on a delivered basis for a wide range of Japan oil products such as naphtha (also known as mean of Platts Japan or MOPJ), gasoline and kerosene. In addition, in April Platts successfully launched domestic Japanese waterborne assessments for gasoline, kerosene, gasoil, high-sulfur fuel oil and low-sulfur fuel oil.

The domestic Japanese waterborne and rack assessments will be modeled on Platts Singapore refined product assessments under which spot market prices are assessed through an independent and transparent price discovery process based on the Platts Market- on-Close (MOC) methodology. The Platts MOC is a structured, highly-transparent price assessment process based on the principle that price is a function of time. The MOC process in oil identifies bids, offers and transactions by company name and results in a time-sensitive, end-of-trading-day daily value. Market participants will be able to contribute to the Platts MOC via the Platts Editorial Window (eWindow)® data-entry and communication tool as well as more traditional methods such as telephone, email and instant messaging.

Prices of the five rack Japan oil products will be assessed for delivery at two locations in Tokyo Bay - Chiba and Kanagawa, would reflect product prices before taxes, reflecting a timestamp of 14:00 Tokyo time. The unit of measure will be Yen per Kiloliter (kl) and transactions, bids and offers of a minimum of 50 kiloliters will be considered for assessment, with the maximum parcel size for any one bid or offer of 200 kiloliters. Platts would publish price assessments for oil products loading on trucks from specified refineries and tanks located in Chiba and Kanagawa one to seven days from the day of publication. Commentaries and market information will be published in Japanese on a daily basis.

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SOURCE S&P Global Platts

SOURCE: S&P Global Platts