Ground Level of Thailand's Oil Price: Means of Platts Singapore (MOPS)

As the oil price structure in Thailand is broken down component by component, it is found that the largest piece in the structure is the "Ex-refinery price", which is essentially the price of the product itself i.e., "petroleum price".

But given that Thailand's refineries rely most if not all of the crude oil from imports, Singapore, a major trading hub for petroleum in Asia, serve as a prime regional reference point that offers a market-based price which reflects the current supply and demand dynamics in the region.

This leads us to the term "The Mean of Platts Singapore" (MOPS) that is a widely used pricing benchmark for fair market value of oil products across Southeast Asia and the broader Asia-Pacific region. It is frequently used to function trade contracts, pricing of refined oil products, and also a reference in hedging or risk management.

The MOPS price assessments are published by S&P Global Commodity Insights (formerly Platts) for various refined oil products traded in Singapore. These products typically include gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other refined petroleum products. The calculation of MOPS is often the average of the daily Platts price assessments for a specific product over a given period, which takes into account of both supply & demand dynamics in the free market. Though there are certain products with lesser transactions that may be assessed in bi-weekly or monthly basis.

As mentioned earlier, the products that refer to MOPS are refined products from the refinery, not crude oil. Why is this the case, and what benchmark do we use for crude oil pricing? We will discuss it in the upcoming blog next week.