The European Energy Exchange and international derivatives exchange Eurex are expanding their co-operation in carbon emissions trading with the launch of options on EEX's EUA future on Apr

The European Energy Exchange and international derivatives exchange Eurex are expanding their co-operation in carbon emissions trading with the launch of options on EEX's EUA future on April 14.

The new EUA options, which are in addition to the existing EUA future, expire yearly from 2008 to 2012, and will be tradable between 8.30 a.m. and 5.00 p.m. CET, while OTC transactions can be registered until 6.00 p.m.

At the same time, EEX and Eurex have announced that the trading fees for exchange trading and registration of OTC transactions for EUA options are to be reduced by 50 per cent by the end of this year.

'The introduction of options on the EUA future offers our participants in the emissions market an additional opportunity to protect themselves from unexpected price developments and to structure their portfolios more efficiently,' says Maik Neubauer, a member of the EEX executive board responsible for the co-operation project.

Peter Reitz, a Eurex executive board member whose responsibilities include co-operating with EEX, adds: 'As announced, our partners are continually expanding their offering with this launch, reinforcing their position in the international trading of carbon dioxide emission rights. The new EUA options will continue to drive marketplace growth.'

As part of the co-operation effort, the partners recently announced the launch of CER futures on March 26. With a volume of nearly 1.1 EUAs, EEX and Eurex exceeded the one million mark on the emission rights market they operate for the first time on March 3. The previous daily record set on February 26 was 600,000 EUAs.

Meanwhile, the Office of General Counsel of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued a no-action letter permitting the offer and sale in the US of Eurex's futures contract based on the RDXxt USD-RDX Extended Index.

The RDXxt is a broad-based, modified market capitalisation-weighted security index composed of at least 15 of the most highly capitalised and actively traded American Depositary Receipts and Global Depositary Receipts on Russian blue-chip companies traded on the London Stock Exchange's international order book. As of February 19, the total adjusted market capitalisation of the RDXxt was some USD135.5bn.