NOS lowers the clearing fee for freight options

NOS is working to offer a wide range of products to the market and at a price reflecting the liquidity in the market. We are therefore pleased to launch new cleared option products on freight and a new reduced clearing fee for options, as of Thursday 1st March 2007.

The new clearing fee for both dry cargo and tanker options is 1,25%

TD7 options from today 1st March 2007

All options are cleared according to Appendix 5 of the Rulebook:

http://prod.nos.no/freight/agreement.html

The updated Rulebook and Notice 04/2007 with the amendments to the Rulebook related to introduction of TD7 options are available at:

http://prod.nos.no/freight/docs/Notice_04-2007.pdf

Please note: Members trading futures only, will not be affected by the recent changes to the Rulebook.

The new Appendix five also includes some minor corrections and clarifications of non material character.

TD7 FREIGHT OPTIONS STRUCTURE:

• TD7 freight options will be available for trading and clearing for all NOS members.
• TD7 freight options will be structured as monthly Call and Put options for the covering the sameperiod as the listed futures contracts with the same Underlying Product.
• TD7 freight options will be Asian style with automatic exercise by NOS.
• All freight options will be settled against the arithmetic average of the Spot Prices for the relevant Underlying Product over the number of Index Days in the month.
• All strikes may be cleared
• All option contracts will be registered on the member s ordinary clearing account with NOS.
• Option premiums will be settled in cash between the member and NOS on the trading day.
• At expiration, all in-the-money options will be automatically settled against the average spot index for delivery period.
• The settlement amount - the positive difference between the average index value and the option strike, will be booked the last business day of the month.

For questions related to clearing and margining, please contact:

• Hanne B. Johansson, VP Commodities NOS tel: +47 2325 9320
• Morten Larsen, Risk Manager NOS tel: +47 2325 9309
• Lauritz Haarr; Head of Options IMAREX +47 2389 4220