2009 was a positive year for the DME characterised by four significant developments. Firstly, liquidity has increased with trading volumes achieving a 69% year-on-year increase and average daily volumes approaching 3,000 lots in the last quarter. Secondly, the DME continues to strengthen its reputation as the largest physically-delivered contract in the world and achieved a record delivery of 11.6 million barrels in September 2009. Thirdly, the adoption of DME Oman as the basis for setting the Official Selling Price (OSP) for Dubai crude by the Dubai Department of Petroleum Affairs in June 2009 further reinforces the growing acceptance of the DME Oman contract as the third global crude oil pricing benchmark. And fourthly, DME contracts were migrated seamlessly onto CME Globex® thereby allowing market participants to access the world's three crude oil benchmarks on a single electronic platform.

The industry support we have received to date has been critical to our continued development. We encourage you to share your thoughts and feedback with us as we work to cement DME Oman as the premier crude oil benchmark in the East of Suez supply/demand basin.

We look forward to working with you as we further develop and grow the DME in 2010.

Thomas Leaver
Chief Executive Officer
Please click here to download the "DME 2009 - Year in review", a document that captures the key developments at the DME during 2009.