Murban’s long journey only beginning

There will be no immediate promotion into the super league of global crude benchmarks for the Middle East’s latest challenger

It has now been just over a month since exchange Ice and Abu Dhabi’s Adnoc listed their heavily trailed Murban crude futures contract on the Ice Futures Abu Dhabi (Ifad) oil exchange. Media attention in the run-up to launch was more substantial than for most fledgling instruments. Some commentators provocatively suggested that Murban could be a substitute for Brent or even possibly WTI. Others posited that Murban could reduce Opec market power and upend Middle East oil pricing. After its first month of trading, has the contract lived up to the hype? It is perhaps worth highlighting, in the context of the key takeaways of Murban’s first month of trading, why the contract was launched in the f