Oil
After the potato ban, NYMEX's existence was in doubt. Most of the trading volume had been in potatoes. Without a good commodity, the traders had trouble making money. Eventually the new chairman, Michel Marks – the son of commodities icon Francis Q. Marks – along with economist Arnold Safer, figured out that NYMEX could revamp an old heating oil futures contract. When the government deregulated heating oil, the contract had a chance of becoming a good object of trade on the floor. A new futures contract was carefully drawn up and trading began on a tiny scale in 1978. Some of the first users of NYMEX heating oil deliveries were small scale suppliers of people in the Northern United States.
NYMEX's business threatened some entrenched interests like big oil and government groups like OPEC that had traditionally controlled oil prices. NYMEX provided an "open market" and thus transparent pricing for heating oil, and, eventually, crude oil, gasoline, and natural gas. NYMEX's oil futures contracts were standardized for the delivery of West Texas Intermediate light, sweet crude oil to Cushing, Oklahoma.
Read more about this topic: New York Mercantile Exchange
Famous quotes containing the word oil:
“It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.”
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)
“As a rule they will refuse even to sample a foreign dish, they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with disgust, life is unliveable to them unless they have tea and puddings.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)