Putin's Decade-Old Dream Realized as Russia to Price Its Own Oil
- Russia hopes to end dependence on Western agencies' assessment
- Foreign traders will be granted direct access to oil exchange
Oil samples sit in test apparatus illuminated with yellow light in a laboratory at the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez oil refinery, operated by OAO Lukoil, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014. Crude slumped 18 percent last month as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries maintained its output quota, letting prices decrease to a level that may slow U.S. production.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergRussian President Vladimir Putin is on the verge of realizing a decade-old dream: Russian oil priced in Russia.
The nation’s largest commodity exchange, whose chairman is Putin ally Igor Sechin, is courting international oil traders to join its emerging futures market. The goal is to increase revenue from Urals crude by disconnecting the price-setting mechanism from the world’s most-used Brent oil benchmark. Another aim is to move away from quoting petroleum in U.S. dollars.