Oil pricing guru Jorge Montepeque departs from General Index: sources

Quantum Commodity Intelligence – The co-founder of a newly-established price reporting agency aiming to take business from energy price index provider Platts has departed from General Index 18 months after starting the company, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Quantum.

Jorge Montepeque, who designed the way in which the global oil market is priced and traded over a 27-year career at S&P Global Platts, left General Index last week, according to the sources.

Montepeque, who is also the former head of origination at Italian oil producer ENI, was a president and co-founder of General Index alongside the CEO Neil Bradford, who was a former chief executive at Argus Media – a rival price reporting agency.

Montepeque was appointed as a director of the company in September and was issued around 20% of the company's stock some weeks later, Company House filings show.

Launched in March 2020, General Index aims to take business from Platts and Argus by offering rival oil benchmarks, which it said were "interchangeable" with those offered by the two price reporting agencies.

General Index hoped to replace established oil price indices by offering similar energy price assessments at a much lower cost, and in doing so, cut the bills of energy majors, many of which pay millions of dollars in data costs to Platts and Argus.

One of the company's prime goals was to wrestle the European gasoline benchmark from Argus by offering an identical volume-weighted average of Eurobob E5 barge trades.

Earlier this year, the company announced two trading houses had agreed to price a spot barge at a price referenced to its gasoline index, although sources said there have been limited follow-through trades.

General Index was contacted for comment.

Quantum competes with General Index, S&P Global Platts and Argus by offering price assessments for crude oil and refined products.