May 2, 2003 - Forward Market Curve Ltd (“FMCL”) is pleased to announce its development of a ground breaking, all-broker methodology for achieving robust and accurate price discovery in forward commodity markets. FMCL’s first offering, an Asia Oil module, is officially launched today, after several months of development and system trials. The founding members in FMCL include the top ten oil brokerage houses in Asia-related swaps - Amerex Petroleum Singapore Pte Ltd, Aspen Oil (Broking) Ltd., Ginga Petroleum (S) Pte Ltd, Intercapital Commodity Swaps Pte Ltd, Prebon Energy (Singapore) Pte Ltd, PVM Oil Associates Pte Ltd, Radix Energy (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Spectron Energy (Asia) Pte Ltd, TFS Energy (S) Pte Ltd, and Starsupply Tullett Energy Pte Ltd, plus consulting firm Oil Trade Associates. Data for FMCL’s Asia Oil module will be collected from participating member offices in Singapore, Tokyo and London.

FMCL is owned by the founders, putting responsibility for the system in the hands of the informed and neutral brokering community. The FMCL board chairmanship will rotate annually, alphabetically among the brokerage houses. The first chairman, Phil Jump of Amerex, notes that the establishment of the ForwardMarketCurve is “significant....the first time that ten broking companies anywhere could get together and agree on something,” and “by establishing a single source for the info, we save our customers a lot of time collating and assessing all the different inputs from the different brokers.”

Industry participants, including traders, end users, back office managers and senior management, have increasingly voiced the need for robust, independent, neutral and accurate forward market curve data. Such data is required for dependable mark-to-market activities, as well as for stimulating market confidence and liquidity on the trading side. Brokerage houses have been providing their in-house data to clients, but no single brokerage covers the entire market. Nor do any of the brokers wish to bear the responsibility of having their proprietary market curves emerge as pricing standards, particularly given the challenges inherent in assessing sometimes-illiquid markets. They recognize that even the most knowledgeable and neutral view of the market is not infallible, and that the only safe approach is averaging multiple informed, neutral views, in a defined, methodical fashion.

FMCL's methodology provides robust, accurate forward market curve data by averaging the expert assessments of the region's leading brokers, the community with the most knowledgeable, neutral views in the industry. Key features of the methodology are as follows:

The ForwardMarketCurve methodology provides the following key advantages:

While they have been, and will continue to be fierce competitors in the street, the brokering community sees significant benefits for the industry if they cooperate in applying the knowledge derived from their unique vantage points to generate curve data of a quality higher than any other methodology could produce. They also know that industry access to this powerful new tool will help grow the market. While the brokers individually recognize the possible "downside" that pooling their data could lessen the competitive edge they might enjoy in certain market segments, they accept that this is a "give and take" situation: While they will each continue to have their strong areas, all participating brokers will have an improved view of the overall market complex, which will enable them to better serve their customers.

Oil Trade Associates will provide day-to-day management services for FMCL. OTA's interest in the project stems from experience developing and administering the Far East Oil Price ("FEOP") Index since 1993. Whereas FMC covers the forward swaps market, FEOP covers the current period physical market, so the two systems are complimentary. The methodologies are similar in that they are both panel approaches, with the main difference being that FMC uses a completely neutral, all-broker panel - something not possible in Asia's physical oil markets.

FMC's immediate goal is to satisfy the industry's need for the most robust, independent, neutral and accurate forward market curve data that can be produced by any means. The longer term goal is to explore expansion of the FMC system in cooperation with brokers in other markets, including both affiliates of the founding members as well as organizations that do not participate in the Asian oil market.

ForwardMarketCurve data will be distributed by leading industry news and data services. For more information, visit www.forwardmarketcurve.com, or contact Bob Ellison or any of the other FMCL directors. FMC Board of Directors: