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OPIS Press Room

April 29, 2013
OPIS’s Propane cif ARA (ToT Cargoes) Now Listed by ICE Futures Europe

Gaithersburg, MD, April 29, 2013 -- Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a leading provider of LPG benchmark spot pricing information announces the listing of its Propane cif ARA (ToT Cargoes) futures contract through ICE Futures Europe’s clearing house, ICE Clear Europe.

This new contract is a monthly cash settled future based upon the average of the daily prices published for “Propane cif ARA (ToT Cargoes) in the OPIS Europe LPG Report. Its contract symbol is TOT and contract size is 1,000 metric tonnes.

“OPIS is thrilled to have this contract now clearing through ICE Clear Europe. It will help mitigate price risk due to increased exports from the U.S.” said Diane Miller, Director, Global LPG/Feedstocks Division, OPIS.

In addition to this new contract, OPIS currently publishes the following contracts through ICE Clear Europe:

• Propane, OPIS Conway In-Well, Fixed Price Balmo Future (LIA-LIZ; LJA-LJE)
• Propane, OPIS Conway In-Well, Fixed Price Future (PRC)
• Propane, OPIS Hattiesburg, Fixed Price Future(PRH)
• Propane, OPIS Mt. Belvieu Non-TET, Fixed Price Balmo Future (LAA-LAZ; LBA-LBE)
• Propane, OPIS Mt. Belvieu Non-TET, Fixed Price Future (PRN)
• Propane, OPIS Mt. Belvieu TET, Fixed Price Balmo Future (LCA-LCZ; LDA-LDE)
• Propane, OPIS Mt. Belvieu TET, Fixed Price Future (PRL)
• Propane, OPIS Mt. Belvieu TET, Mini Fixed Price Future (PLM)

March 1, 2013
OPIS Acquires GasBuddy

Gaithersburg, MD, March 1, 2013 – Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) has acquired GasBuddy, the mobile app and website relied on by more than 26 million motorists to pinpoint the most comprehensive and accurate gasoline prices at service stations and convenience stores across the U.S. and Canada.

"Through our combined resources, consumers will have the very best retail fuel prices, tools and information to save money at the pump," said OPIS CEO Brian Crotty. "I look forward to working shoulder-to-shoulder with Dustin Coupal and Jason Toews, co-founders of GasBuddy, and their talented staff," he added.

"We are excited to gain access to OPIS's enormous database of spot and wholesale gasoline prices and OPIS' award-winning daily news wire," said GasBuddy co-founder Jason Toews. "That access will further enhance GasBuddy's ability to alert consumers to retail gasoline and diesel price changes in the marketplace."

OPIS will also accelerate investment in GasBuddy's "OpenStore" software, which enables convenience stores to reach their customers with highly targeted value offerings. "Expanding the couponing features of this platform will provide discounts to consumers for a host of products and services sold at service stations and convenience stores," Crotty added.

Horizon Partners served as financial advisor to GasBuddy / OpenStore in this transaction.

About GasBuddy
GasBuddy is a leading consumer app and website to help consumers find cheap gas prices. People use the website and app to share the gas prices that they see on their daily commutes. Through the efforts of millions of consumers, GasBuddy makes it easy to find cheap gas prices. Download the GasBuddy app for free.

About OpenStore
OpenStore is the industry leading multi-channel marketing solution that brings mobile app, website, email, SMS, and social media marketing to convenience store companies. Through its marketing solution, convenience stores deliver content and digital coupons, which build customer loyalty and increase sales. More than 6,000 convenience stores rely on OpenStore's multi-channel marketing solution.

About OPIS OPIS, a subsidiary of UCG, is a leading source for worldwide petroleum pricing and news information and has offices in Gaithersburg, MD; Wall, NJ; St. Paul, MN; Gothenburg, Sweden and Singapore. Every day, OPIS publishes spot prices for all refined products, more than 30,000 wholesale gasoline and diesel rack prices and more than 110,000 retail fuel prices. Through its subsidiary, Axxis Software, OPIS also provides leading-edge software solutions for petroleum marketers looking to automate price collection, data storage and repricing of dealer and commercial accounts.

About UCG
Founded in 1977, UCG is one of America's leading, privately held providers of specialized business-to-business information. UCG's portfolio is composed of companies serving the information and software needs of decision makers in health care, oil and energy, technology, telecommunications, banking and finance, and the mortgage industry. The company has received many awards for journalistic excellence and was voted one of D.C.'s 50 Best Places to Work by Washingtonian Magazine.

December 31, 2012
OPIS Acquires LCI Energy Insight

Gaithersburg, MD, December 31, 2012 – Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), the nation's leading provider of petroleum spot, rack and retail news and pricing information, announces the acquisition of LCI Energy Insight (LCI).

Based in El Paso, Texas, LCI is a premier provider of natural gas supply and market analysis as well as other key information and business intelligence for the North American gas industry.

"This acquisition is highly strategic for OPIS as it puts us squarely in the growing North American natural gas business," said Brian Crotty, CEO & President, OPIS. LCI will become a division of OPIS and will be run by LCI President, George Lippman.

"I am excited to be teaming up with a company that has such a strong brand in the energy information space. I look forward to leveraging their expertise and infrastructure to improve and expand our products and services," Lippman said.

July 2, 2012
New Partnership Makes OPIS Price Benchmarks Available in Telvent DTN Fuel Pricing and Trading Software – Alignment enhances solution options for customers of both companies

Gaithersburg, MD, July 2, 2012 – Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a leading source for worldwide petroleum pricing and news information, announced today that a recent agreement with Telvent GIT, S.A. will make OPIS's highly benchmarked spot and rack pricing data available to users of Telvent DTN's popular fuel pricing analysis and energy trading data management solutions. This reliable information, coupled with the productivity features that make the Telvent DTN information management solutions industry leaders, will provide subscribers with complete and effective solutions for optimized fuel buying and selling decisions.

OPIS will provide Telvent DTN exclusive access to its recently launched Real-Time Racks pricing service, which continually updates OPIS low, high and average pricing benchmarks for more than 390 terminals. Telvent DTN's fuel pricing and trading data management solutions will centralize this reliable information for users and, with powerful analytical and filtering tools, make fuel buying, selling and trading processes more efficient and decision making more agile and accurate. The agreement also has Telvent DTN providing its rack price updates, via DTN FastRacks® service, to OPIS for inclusion in the latter's rack pricing services.

According to Telvent's Chairman and CEO, Ignacio Gonzalez, "We are pleased that our customers can now have direct access to OPIS prices via our renowned information management solutions for fuel pricing and trading. OPIS customers also will benefit, with an additional software choice to access and analyze their pricing benchmarks."

Brian Crotty, OPIS President and CEO, noted, "The additional Telvent DTN price feed will further strengthen our already exceptional OPIS rack price services."

OPIS will continue to provide its rack price benchmarks directly to customers and through other third-party software vendors, and Telvent DTN will continue to offer its branded 24-hour fuel rack pricing service to its customers.

January 25, 2012
OPIS Partners with PortStorage Group to Create World's Largest Tank Storage Database

Gaithersburg, MD, Jan 25, 2012 – Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a leader in petroleum spot, wholesale and retail news and pricing data, is pleased to announce an agreement with PortStorage Group, an international provider of independent and commercial petroleum tank storage facility information, creating the world's largest tank storage database.

PortStorage Group, through its on-line product, TankTerminals.com, delivers up-to-date international terminal information for those looking for storage and transhipment of crude, petroleum products, liquid chemicals, etc. and for those firms who service tank terminalling companies.

"Combining the OPIS/STALSBY North American bulk liquid terminal database with TankTerminals.com now offers a truly worldwide picture of the petroleum storage landscape – giving industry professionals access to approximately 3,500 terminals," said OPIS President, Brian Crotty.

"Because the combined OPIS/STALSBY and PortStorage Group database is now made available at one single location, www.tankterminals.com and that the entire database is maintained on-line 24/7, this platform offers an easily accessible and constantly available reference guide for, amongst others, factual tank terminal information, an up-to-date news section, and a professional Knowledgebank," said PortStorage Group Managing Director, Rob Luijendijk.

The fully searchable TankTerminals.com provides the name/location of the facility, contact details for key personnel, tank storage capacity, tank range, tank types, and the types of cargo that can be stored. Details for waterfront terminals are also included and can reveal whether a facility may handle other modes of transport such as barge, road, rail, and pipeline. Virtually any terminal listed in the database has been furnished with its geographical coordinates. With Google Maps integrated in this website, any of these terminals can actually be seen from an elevated position in a map and satellite view.

About PortStorage Group
PortStorage Group was established in 2008 as a 50/50 JV following the amalgamation of an TankTerminal.net and TankBank.info owned by Downstream, Netherlands and Tankbank, Singapore. The new database, which became the world's foremost digital reference guide, was then launched under the trade-name TankTerminals.com. Downstream is a Dutch consultancy company providing M&A and Research & Business Development for the global tank storage industry. Tankbank International Pte Ltd is a Singapore-based service provider specialising in commercial assistance, conferences and networking for the energy sector.

May 10, 2011
OPIS Launches 'Clean' Jet Fuel and Carbon Assessments, Simplifies Emissions Compliance for Airlines and Fuel Suppliers

Gaithersburg, MD, May 10, 2011 – Carbon and jet fuel prices consolidated into one daily assessment is the essence of a pricing service being launched by Oil Price Information Service at an aviation industry conference in Singapore this week.

OPIS is unique in providing a price mechanism for new ETS-ready supply contracts, such as World Fuels Services' Carbon Neutral Jet Fuel.

From January 1, 2012, airlines must submit multiple emissions allowances, or related certificates, to national authorities for every tonne of jet fuel burned. Some airlines have hired staff to actively trade allowances, but many are seeking to comply with the new emissions system without raising their fixed costs.

"For airlines who don't want to actively trade carbon emissions, a clean price is perfect," said the Environment and CSR Manager of a major Northern European airline.

The Clean Jet Assessment is included in the OPIS Europe Jet Fuel & Gasoil Report and provides the first integrated pricing mechanism for the new supply contracts. Try the OPIS Europe Jet Fuel & Gasoil Report free for 5-days.

As well as clean jet prices in Rotterdam and Northwest Europe, OPIS is providing daily Emissions Allowance price levels, and forward market projections for jet fuel with carbon included at the end of the year, and in 2012.

OPIS President, Brian Crotty says "Although it may feel like the deadlines for submitting allowances are far off, fuel managers need to think ahead, and this gives them a basis for planning and purchasing as the 2012 buying season gets into gear this Spring."

OPIS's Tim Lloyd Wright is in Singapore for the launch at the International Air Transport Association Fuel Forum: "The response has been very good so far," he said. "The aviation manager of Europe's largest refiner just called me to say how useful he though the assessment was – this is a really big deal for the whole industry."

A free white paper regarding this topic can be found on http://cleanjet.opisnet.com

January 31, 2011
OPIS Launches Historical Retail Fuel Price Web Query Tool

Gaithersburg, MD, January 31, 2011 – Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) announces the launch of its newest web-based query tool for retail fuel prices - The OPIS Retail DataHouse.

OPIS houses the world's largest database of retail gasoline and diesel prices and margins. This tool allows users to pull data as far back as January 2007 for up to 130,000 unique stations that represent 290+ brands in over 38,000 different geographic regions in the U.S. Users can roll up station data to view prices and margins in nearly every zip code, town, county, state, metropolitan area, and even on a national level.

Retail fuel prices are compared against OPIS's proprietary rack prices enabling this state-of-the-art database to display estimated profit margin data at gas stations across the U.S.

This self-serve, web-based tool provides on-demand availability. Users can run queries any time of day and get results which can be downloaded in an .xls or .csv format. "This is a game changer! The ease of use, quickness of results and unmatched flexibility makes research a snap," said Fred Rozell, Director, Retail Pricing for OPIS. He added, "I can't imagine any retailer not using such a powerful tool especially when spending millions on acquiring new properties."

The OPIS Retail DataHouse can be accessed through a one-year subscription or on a per query basis.

To begin using this new retail tool, please call an OPIS customer service representative at 1-888-301-2645.