Houston Mercantile Exchange Announces Enhanced Risk Management Opportunities for Midstream Energy and Plastics Industries

Houston Mercantile Exchange LLC (HMX), the new electronic exchange for trading midstream energy, feedstocks, chemicals, plastics and metals, announced today that in connection with the new offering of cleared over-the-counter (OTC) products by the CME Group, HMX will list five new NGL products and two new plastics products for trading on the HMX OTC platform. The new contracts will be electronically submitted for clearing in real time to ClearPort®, the premier industry clearing platform.

Effective immediately, HMX will offer the following new financially cleared OTC contracts:

Product - Location Basis - Settlement

• Ethane Swap - Mt. Belvieu, TX - Oil Price Information Service (OPIS)
• Normal Butane Swap - Mt. Belvieu, TX - OPIS
• Iso Butane Swap - Mt. Belvieu, TX - OPIS
• Natural Gasoline Swap - Mt. Belvieu, TX - OPIS
• Propane Swap - Conway, KS - OPIS
• High Density Polyethylene - Houston, TX - Physical
• Polypropylene - Houston, TX - Physical

"In adding these new cleared products, we're expanding the slate of products offered down the energy and chemical derivative value chain," said HMX President and CEO, Eric Paulsen. "We are providing the market with risk management tools to actively manage product margin risk, while the industry standard clearing system, CME ClearPort®, will help companies mitigate credit risk and optimize financial margin efficiency."

"With the launch of these new contracts, CME Group believes there is an opportunity to provide additional risk management tools to the energy and plastics markets," said Joseph Raia, managing director of energy and metals for CME Group. "The current financial crisis has highlighted the importance of counterparty risk mitigation provided by the CME clearing model. Customers not only trade the products needed to manage their risk but they can rely on CME Clearing to back each transaction through its time-tested, $7 billion financial safeguard system."

"These new cleared instruments provide the industry with unique transactional opportunities," said Diane Miller, OPIS General Manager. "The NGL industry will certainly benefit from this capability to better manage risk using the industry standard benchmarks published by OPIS, the transparent and independent HMX trading platform, and the respected CME ClearPort® clearing system."

About Houston Mercantile Exchange, LLC

The Houston Mercantile Exchange is an independent and neutral online transaction exchange for energy, chemicals, plastics, metals and other industrial raw materials. The HMX electronic trading platform supports real-time trade negotiation and execution, providing an efficient and secure commodity trading system for all participants for bilateral transactions and financially cleared transactions on a range of CME Clearport® products. HMX provides innovative transaction processes for buyers, sellers and traders in established markets and those in the early stages of finding liquidity and transparency. HMX is based in Houston, Texas. Additional information about HMX can be found at www.houstonmerc.com.

Contact: Eric T. Paulsen, 713-405-1161, xpress@houstonmerc.com

About CME Group

CME Group (http://www.cmegroup.com/) is the world's largest and most diverse derivatives exchange. Building on the heritage of CME, CBOT and NYMEX, CME Group serves the risk management needs of customers around the globe. As an international marketplace, CME Group brings buyers and sellers together on the CME Globex electronic trading platform and on trading floors in Chicago and New York. By acting as the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer, CME Clearing virtually eliminates counterparty credit risk. CME Clearing also offers $7 billion in financial safeguards to help mitigate systemic risk, providing the security and confidence market participants need to operate, invest and grow. CME Group offers the widest range of benchmark products available across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, and alternative investment products such as weather and real estate. CME Group is listed on Nasdaq under the symbol "CME."

The Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, Globex and E-mini, are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago. NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange, and ClearPort are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange. Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Further information about CME Group and its products can be found at http://www.cmegroup.com/.

Contact: Media, Allan Schoenberg, +1-312-930-8189, or Anu Ahluwalia, +1-212-299-2439, news@cmegroup.com, or Investors, John Peschier, +1-312-930-8491, all of CME Group

Web site: http://www.cmegroup.com/

About Oil Price Information Service

Oil Price Information Service (OPIS - http://www.opisnet.com) is the most widely accepted fuel price benchmark for supply contracts and competitive positioning. It's used as the benchmark price by the world to buy and sell U.S. gasoline, diesel, ethanol, biodiesel, LP-gas, jet fuel, crude, propane, feedstocks, resid, and kerosene. Through its subsidiary, Axxis Software, it also provides leading-edge software solutions for petroleum marketers looking to automate price collection, data storage and repricing of dealer and commercial accounts.