Muscat: More than 620 million barrels of Omani crude oil were traded in the first half of this year, Oman News Agency quoting the Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME), said on Saturday.
“This reflects the growing interest in Omani crude oil by regional oil producers and oil importers in Asia and the world,” the DME statement said.
The mercantile exchange said that global markets went through sharp volatility in oil prices and demand for crude oil due to the Corona pandemic, at the beginning of 2020, and then the geopolitical turmoil in more than one region around the world in 2021.
The oil markets started to return to an upward trend at the beginning of 2022 as a result of the military operations in Ukraine as well as the high demand for oil and its products, and demand picking up with the easing of precautionary measures of the pandemic by many countries.
In the first half of this year, DME witnessed an increase in the trading volumes of the Oman crude oil contract for the delivery month by 18 per cent, reaching 361 million barrels, compared to 296 million barrels for the same period in 2021.
The exchange delivered 90 million barrels in the first half of 2022, and the average monthly delivery was 15 million barrels, an increase of 23 per cent over the first half of 2021.
Raed bin Khalifa Al Salami, Director General of the DME, said that Oman’s crude oil prices witnessed a remarkable rise, reaching 51.48 per cent between January 2021 and June 2022, with the continued recovery of markets and the increase in demand in Asia on the one hand, and global tensions and political crises on the other.
The Director General of the DME added to the Oman News Agency that the performance of the Oman oil future contract reaffirms the importance of this indicator in the oil markets in the Middle East and Asia, as it plays a pivotal role in discovering oil prices and pricing more than 5 million barrels of oil per day.
