Dubai - The Dubai Mercantile Exchange announced that more than 620 million barrels of Omani crude oil were traded in the first half of this year, reflecting the growing interest in it by regional oil producers and oil importers in Asia and the world.
The stock exchange indicated that the global markets went through sharp fluctuations in oil prices and demand for crude due to the pandemic, which started in 2020, and geopolitical turmoils in 2021.
Raed bin Khalifa al Salami, Director General of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange, said that Oman's crude oil prices witnessed a remarkable increase of 51.48 percent 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.
Al Salami said 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 monitoring the oil price trends in this region.
The oil markets returned to an upward trend at the beginning of 2022 as a result of the military operations in Ukraine, the high demand for oil and its products, and the easing of precautionary measures for the pandemic in many countries.
In the first half of this year, the stock market witnessed an increase in the trading volumes of the Oman crude oil contract for the delivery month by 18 percent, 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 percent over the first half of 2021.
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