The proliferation of electronic trading in the world's energy markets has accelerated the timescales and impact events have on commodities and oil prices. Combined with ongoing economic volatility, having low-latency access to crude data has become extremely important for algorithmic and high-frequency energy traders. Through the partnership with Genscape, subscribers gain programmatic access to the bi-weekly Genscape report that provides precise measurements of crude oil in storage at the Cushing, Okla., facility, the physical delivery point for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange light crude futures contracts. This storage gauge impacts the price differential between the front and future contract months and ripples across the price curve. When supplies at Cushing decrease, it may be viewed by the industry as a signal that the major players in the market foresee a flattening of the forward curve, and vice versa. Since mid-November, Cushing oil supplies, as reported by Genscape, have fallen from approximately 35.5 million barrels to a recent 32.4 million barrels, and the price curve has flattened substantially.

"The Genscape Cushing storage figures are watched closely by the world's oil markets and can have an immediate impact on the West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil price curve," said Ryan Terpstra, founder and CEO of Selerity. "Providing our clients with unique access to this crucial, low-latency data will help them make strategic trading decisions in order to maximize alpha and hedge against market risk. Using our platform, Genscape now has the ability to monetize and deliver their unique content sets to the automated trading market."

"The facilities in Cushing can hold up to 10% of U.S. oil inventory and play an important role as indicators of market direction for the world's energy traders," said Matthew Burkley, CEO at Genscape. "Working with Selerity will provide us access to sophisticated, technology centric investors engaged in the energy markets."

The data is available in all of Selerity's co-location points of presence (POP) including Equinix's CH1 (Chicago), NY2 (NY/NJ) and FR2 (Frankfurt) datacenters. Selerity's proprietary distribution technology facilitates multi-geography, simultaneous delivery allowing clients to locally access data in each location without the need to transmit data between geographies.

Genscape gathers its readings each Tuesday and Friday by flying over the facility and using sophisticated infrared technology to measure the capacity in every storage tank. The firm then distills this data and provides real-time updates via Selerity's real-time low-latency network to electronic trading firms every Monday and Thursday at 9:00 a.m. EST.