The exchange was initially started in 2005, when
Tatweer and
NYMEX signed a
Joint Venture Agreement to launch a commodities exchange in the Middle East. The following year,
Oman’s Ministry of Oil and Gas (MOG) announced that the Omani crude oil’s official selling price (OSP) exported through PDO would be set according to the DME Oman Crude Oil Futures contract. In the first half of 2007,
Oman Investment Fund (OIF) acquired a stake in the DME, which was launched on 1 June of that year. Two major events in 2008 that notably changed the DME’s shareholding structure; several trading firms and international financial institutions, namely
Concord Energy,
Goldman Sachs,
JPMorgan Chase,
Morgan Stanley,
Shell and
Vitol, became shareholders of the DME, and NYMEX was acquired by the
CME Group. The acquisition of NYMEX by the CME Group greatly impacted the DME. Until the DME migration to the
electronic trading platform CME
Globex in 2009, DME futures used to be traded on DME Direct, an electronic platform designed by NYMEX specifically for the DME. The switch to one of the leading platforms, CME Globex, in February 2009 has helped make the access to the DME contracts easier for market participants, as all three benchmarks (WTI, Brent and DME Oman) can be traded on the same electronic platform. Another boost for the DME in 2009 was the announcement by the Dubai Department of Petroleum Affairs (DPA) in switching their pricing formula to the forward public OSP based on the DME contract. That meant that the Dubai crude oil selling price would become: OSPᴍ = DME Oman (ᴍ-2) ± differential In December 2010, NYMEX announced the launch of six DME Oman-linked contracts to complement the availability of trading instruments so as to help establish the benchmark. ==Futures Contract==