US President Donald Trump has been presented with a capsule of domestically produced oil by the head of the UAE company Adnoc.
Dr Sultan Al Jaber, managing director and group chief executive of Adnoc, told Mr Trump the oil was Murban, one of the highest quality grades of crude oil.
“The highest-quality oil there is on the planet and they only gave me a drop of it," Mr Trump joked. "So I’m not thrilled. But it’s better than no drop.”
Dr Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, told the US President before a meeting of business leaders in Abu Dhabi on Friday: “This has become a globally recognised benchmark."
Murban is the UAE's flagship crude oil grade. Supplied by Adnoc, it is considered one of the lowest carbon-emission crude oils in the world.
It is a premium-grade, light, sweet crude that is popular among Asian buyers, who are increasingly dominating the global trade in oil.
Fujairah port on the UAE's east coast accounts for about 75 per cent of Murban exports, with the rest shipped out from Ruwais port, according to S&P Global.
The Murban futures contract made its debut on the Ifad in March 2021 as the UAE's capital set its sights on becoming a commodities hub.
Ifad, at the Abu Dhabi Global Market, is an independent futures exchange for the trade of Murban futures contract derivatives.
The Murban futures contract allows oil from Abu Dhabi to become a freely traded global commodity, filling a void in the trading and pricing of crude from the Middle East.
Total traded volume for Murban crude oil futures more than doubled to 6.04 million lots in 2024, surging by 3.75 million lots year-on-year, the highest since the launch of the contract on March 29, 2021, data from the exchange showed.
Murban is Adnoc's largest crude by volume, accounting for about two million barrels per day of production capacity. It typically sees baseload demand from certain refineries in Japan and South-east Asia, but in recent months has faced stiff competition from arbitrage barrels from the US, S&P Global said.
