Argus Launches World’s First Composite Nitrogen Fertilizer Index

Global energy and fertilizer price reporting agency Argus has introduced a new global composite nitrogen fertilizer index in today’s Argus FMB Nitrogen report. The new index includes prices for ammonia, urea, UAN solutions, ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulphate. The Argus Nitrogen Index is constructed using 11 pricing points for the Black Sea, the Baltic, the US Gulf, Egypt and the Middle East.

The Argus Nitrogen Index will provide a weekly snapshot of the global nitrogen market, smoothing out product and geographical volatility to present an easily understood composite and representative price. Argus has introduced the new index in response to industry requests.

Argus indexes are widely used across international energy markets for physical and derivative trading. They include the Argus Euro-Bob price, which is the benchmark for northwest European gasoline trading, the ASCI benchmark, which is the reference price used by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to sell sour crude into the US, and the AFEI, ANSI and cif ARA indexes, which are used for pricing LPG in Europe and Asia Pacific.

“We hope that the new Argus Nitrogen Index will offer the fertilizer industry a useful price reference and potential hedging tool,” Argus Media chairman and chief executive Adrian Binks said. “We are always happy to develop new instruments to meet the needs of our customers and the wider fertilizer and energy markets.”