Release Date: 05/04/00 
New York Mercantile Exchange Announces E-Commerce Venture

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
CONTACT:
Nachamah Jacobovits
(212) 299-2430
Maria Gonzalez
(212) 299-2436
NEW YORK, NY, May 4, 2000 - The board of directors of the New York Mercantile 
Exchange last night approved the formation of eNYMEX, an e-commerce venture 
that is intended to become the premier, global exchange for over-the-counter 
(OTC) forward trading and clearing of a wide range of standardized physical 
commodity contracts. 
The board also established an implementation schedule and retained the 
services of Andersen Consulting to work on the venture. 
The Exchange plans to use its proven clearing infrastructure to introduce 
complete counter-party risk management for OTC trading, and create net 
margining with Exchange futures markets by calculating a consolidated 
clearing position. eNYMEX will provide a single, internet-based interface to 
both the OTC market and the Exchange futures market by routing futures orders 
to the trading floor and the NYMEX ACCESSc electronic trading system, 
depending on the session. 
The Exchange's vision for the venture also includes pursuing strategic 
partnerships through which eNYMEX would provide clearing services to external 
organizations and creating a credit structure that will permit floor members 
to participate in OTC markets. 
The range of OTC products offered will initially focus on swap contracts in 
crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, and electricity, with some spot 
cash market products also offered. Over time, this would be expanded into 
such areas as precious and base metals, coal, and, potentially, bandwidth, 
weather, and emissions. Although the initial geographic focus will be on 
North America, contracts are also expected to be offered for some European 
and Asian locations. 
In addition to today's launch announcement, the key milestones of eNYMEX, are 
expected to be a third quarter introduction of OTC trading, followed by 
Internet-based order-routing for futures trading, including a common 
interface for OTC and futures trading, and clearing and settlement of OTC 
trading. 
Exchange Chairman Daniel Rappaport said, "The global energy and metals 
community has expressed a strong need for an electronic OTC platform that 
provides an open, independent, and neutral marketplace for trading by all 
participants, price transparency, counter-party credit risk management, and 
the liquidity created by simple standardized contracts." 
Mr. Rappaport also enumerated several other advantages of eNYMEX over other 
available OTC systems: 
? Leveraging the proven market management capabilities of the Exchange. 
? The combination of the existing futures and options markets with the eNYMEX 
electronic OTC market provides an ideal combination of e-commerce with 
"bricks & mortar". 
? The Exchange's established and well-regarded clearinghouse, which will be 
used to provide counter-party risk management 
? Net margining of positions across the futures and OTC markets, providing 
significant cashflow benefits to participants trading across markets and 
commodities. 
eNYMEX will be a wholly owned, for-profit subsidiary of the New York 
Mercantile Exchange.