CME Clearing Europe Offers Two New European Natural Gas Contracts

CME Clearing Europe, CME Group's European clearing house, today announced that it has added two new over-the-counter (OTC) European natural gas forward contracts for clearing: the United Kingdom (UK) National Balancing Point (NBP) Natural Gas Physically Delivered Forward contract and the Netherlands (NL) Title Transfer Facility (TTF) Natural Gas Physically Delivered Forward contract. These contracts will be listed for clearing on CME ClearPort and will be subject to the rules of CME Clearing Europe, CME Group's European clearing house. These contracts will launch on 25 February 2013 subject to approval by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). "These new clearing contracts are aimed at the NBP and TTF European natural gas markets which account for over two-thirds of all European gas trading. Currently there is no relevant clearing option available to the market to clear the physically settled forward contracts. We will offer within-month and longer dated contracts," said Les Male, Senior Director, Energy Products at CME Group. "Additionally, CME Clearing Europe contracts offer OTC straight-through-processing." The addition of European natural gas to CME Group's suite of global energy products offers our customers new trading strategies that enable them to manage counterparty credit risk in the natural gas