Intercontinental Exchange’s ICE Futures Europe Low Sulphur Gasoil contract achieved a daily volume record of 766,054 contracts on 1 November 2016.
Volume in ICE Low Sulphur Gasoil-related contracts, such as the ICE Low Sulphur Gasoil/Brent Futures Crack and the ICE Heating Oil/Low Sulphur Gasoil Futures Spread also achieved daily records of 57,890 contracts and 10,164 contracts, respectively.
The strong growth in ICE Low Sulphur Gasoil futures volume is driven by rising hedging demand from European refineries to meet winter diesel specifications and increasing hedging activity in cross-Atlantic diesel arbitrage flows.
The ICE Low Sulphur Gasoil futures contract is based on a 0.001 per cent sulphur (10 ppm) diesel barge specification, reflecting the underlying European middle distillate market which has moved towards a low sulphur grade in recent years.
Since the transition from 0.1 per cent to 0.001 per cent sulphur diesel contract in May 2014, ICE Low Sulphur Gasoil has created a number of open interest records. On 31 October 2016 open interest was 936,032 lots.
