In this episode of Energy Newsbeat – Conversations in Energy, Stu Turley, host, welcomes Joe Raia, Chief Commercial Officer at Abaxx Exchange, to discuss how Abaxx is revolutionizing global commodity futures trading. From physically deliverable LNG and critical mineral contracts to pioneering gold vaulting in Singapore, Raia outlines how Abaxx is bringing much-needed innovation, transparency, and risk management to underserved markets. They also dive into shifting global trade blocs, the need for dollar-based lithium pricing, and how new technology and infrastructure investment are reshaping the future of energy and commodity finance.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with Joe, and discovering what Abaxx Commodities Exchange can do for national security and global market trade is huge. I look forward to more interviews with Joe, and I would like to have him join a panel discussion with Doomberg in the future to cover global financial markets.

When you have access to trade Energy, Carbon, Battery Materials, Critical Minerals, and Precious Metals, we call that security. You have heard me say energy security starts at home, but growth comes through trading with trusted partners, and Abaxx really solves a problem. Trading with ties to purchasing and delivery.

Joe, thank you for your time, leadership, and for stopping by the podcast, Stu

Check out Abaxx Exchange here: https://abaxx.exchange/

Connect with Joe Raia on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-raia-4982a417/

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

00:50 – What is Abaxx?

01:41 – The LNG Market Problem

03:50 – Abaxx’s Physically Deliverable Contracts

05:06 – Missed Risk Tools in Europe

06:00 – Clearinghouse & Regulation

07:05 – Critical Minerals Contracts

08:32 – The Role of Tariffs & Re-Shoring

10:03 – Surviving Regulation

11:40 – Gold Futures Breakthrough in Asia

12:59 – The Rise of New Trading Blocs

14:54 – Impact of EU’s Energy Policy

16:04 – The “Three Horsemen” of Energy

17:04 – LNG Margins & Export Growth

18:13 – Molecule Demand & Natural Gas

18:49 – LNG to Electricity Opportunities

19:17 – US LNG Momentum Continues

19:22 – What’s Coming in Q1 2026?

20:42 – How to Connect with Abaxx

21:04 – Wrap-up & Final Thoughts

This is what the world needs: a Commoditiy Exchange, and Joe is at the right place, at the right time.

1. Abaxx Commodity Futures Exchange:

– Abaxx is a new commodity futures exchange and clearinghouse based in Singapore, regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

– They are focused on developing new commodity products and risk management tools, particularly in areas like LNG, battery materials, and gold.

– Their goal is to provide more relevant and directly correlated pricing instruments compared to what is currently available in the market.

2. LNG Futures Contracts:

– Abaxx has developed LNG futures contracts that are physically deliverable, allowing market participants to use the exchange as a “buyer or seller of last resort” in case of disruptions.

– This is seen as an important innovation, as previous LNG pricing has been based on less correlated instruments like crude oil and pipeline gas.

3. Critical Minerals Futures Contracts:

– Abaxx has launched futures contracts for nickel sulfate and lithium carbonate, which are important for the battery materials market.

– They see this as an important area for risk management as the processing capacity outside of China is still developing.

4. Geopolitics and Energy Policies:

– The discussion touches on the potential bifurcation of energy markets, with the EU following net-zero policies and the US, Middle East, India, and Asia potentially forming a new trading bloc.

– The potential impact of geopolitical events like the Russia-Ukraine war on energy and commodity markets is also discussed.

5. Technology and Innovation in Commodity Markets:

– Abaxx is exploring the use of new technologies and digital solutions to improve the efficiency and risk management in commodity futures markets, which have seen limited innovation in recent decades.

Full Transcript:

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:00:07] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat Podcast. My name’s Stu Turley President and CEO at the Sandstone Group. Today is an outstanding day. I have got Joe Raia. He is the chief commercial officer over at Abax Commodity Futures Exchange. I think I just butchered up the name of the company and Joe’s last name. Welcome, Joe. How are you today?

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:00:27] I’m good, Stuart. Well you got the my last name right, but I think the the pronunciation of the exchange is Abaxx. Close enough though, so that’s that’s

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:00:36] Hey, we will have we’ll have the link, Joe, in the show notes for pe people that cannot understand a text okay. So

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:00:45] Exactly.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:00:46] Well, welcome to the podcast and tell us a little bit about what you got going over there.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:00:50] Yeah, it’s it’s an interesting combination of old school exchanges, futures exchanges, regulated markets into new school markets like LNG and battery materials. And using both of those combined, we’re bringing new products to the market that really hadn’t been available to trade. And this is important for risk management, especially involved with volatility that you see across global commodity markets. It’s it’s an important, we think, an important new addition to the marketplace that the incumbent exchanges really have have largely ignored over the past five to ten years.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:01:23] Well, this is really exciting. I’ve I I found you through some folks that have highly recommended you you all and after going through your website and stuff, you’re you got critical minerals, you’ve got the right focus on the right things to make investors money. I mean, this is what it’s all about.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:01:41] It is. And you know, we we’ve been working on LNG for about six years now. So it isn’t a something that just you know popped into our heads 15 minutes ago. We’ve we started with our thesis on looking at the change in LNG markets globally from term contracts from Qatar and other areas to more spot market focused and more optimization of traders’ portfolios, even with term contracts and with the marketplace that the way it was structured, there was zero ability to use a benchmark pricing related and directly correlated to waterborne LNG to manage your price risk, to manage your volatility, to manage your counterparty risk even. And so we engage with the marketplace now going back into the probably middle parts of 2019 to look at developing a global like a global benchmark or global benchmarks for pricing for better risk management. Because when you look at how pricing has been done, both going into long-term contracts or even over the past five to ten years in spot markets, they were related and using pricing that was non-correlated. They were using brand crude oil, which is makes no sense. They were using pipeline gas. Henry Hub has a great is a great benchmark. I helped develop that one during my years at the NYMEX, but for a product that is pricing waterborne LNG really doesn’t make any sense. They were using TTF, another European pipeline that if you look back to a few years ago, the hyper volatility surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused my markets to blow out price wise. So that affected waterborne LNG for any contracts that were priced to that. So when you look at the need for pricing instruments that are directly correlated, I mean, just think of it this way if you’re taking a cargo of LNG into Japan and you’re using brand crude oil for your pricing instrument, I mean. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that that makes no sense. And so what we’re bringing to the market are more relevant pricing instruments, more directly correlated instruments that that the marketplace needs. And so far we’ve been lucky. You know, we’ve had really great uptake on our Gulf of Mexico contract. We’re trading the equivalent of over a cargo a day now out of the US Gulf. And and just yesterday alone, we have an Asian contract that delivers into China, Japan, South Korea. That contract started trading very actively yesterday for the first time. So we’re really excited about that. And the difference, not to make a long, a long drawn-out intro here, but the difference on our contracts from all the other instruments out there is that our contracts are physically deliverable. So you can actually use the exchange and the clearinghouse as what we call or the market calls a buyer or seller of last resort. Meaning if there’s something that goes wrong in the marketplace with any physical futures, whether it’s soybeans, it’s hogs, whether it’s WTI crude oil, you can you can actually go to delivery on those futures contracts with our contract. Now, if you have disruptions in the marketplace globally, you can go to delivery FOB US Gulf with our contract. You can go to the delivery in China with our contracts. So that’s something that the marketplace just didn’t exist up until we launched our contracts.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:04:45] How cool is this? This is outstanding. Now, the contract mechanism, because Germany and the EU are facing total deindustrialization through following their net zero policies, if they had had actual contracts in place, they might not be facing deindustrialization and fiscal collapse.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:05:07] Yeah, I think you know, we try to stay out of the geopolitical side of things and we look at market for true market forces that that that direct us to launch and build contracts like we like we have, whether it’s in LNG or gold markets or battery materials or carbon or really anything. I mean, the important part to note is not only do we have an exchange and we’re regulated, but we also have a clearinghouse. And that means that the risk of the management of risk of these markets, whether it’s counterparty risk or price volatility, goes through a a secure clearinghouse that that basically guarantees the performance of the contracts. And so we can look at markets that are yeah, and that’s the but that’s synonymous across all the exchange, regulated exchanges. And there’s only a handful of them. When you look at the global commodity landscape and futures, you have CME, you have ICE, you have SGX, you have Deutsche Borst and NEX, those are really the the true commodity futures marketplaces. We as a Singapore based entity, we’re regulated by the MAS. We’re the first new commodity futures exchange in clearinghouse built from the ground up, probably in over two decades. And so you know, the incumbents have built a lot of boats around their business. Took us a long time to swim across that moat. We’re still climbing the the the castle, but you know, we’ve had success now in our gold futures contract quite quite significantly and also in our LNG futures and even in our carbon futures now too. So the good thing is as the marketplace comes to us and sees the a lack of innovation from the other incumbent exchanges. I mean, they’re focused on so many different asset classes now. I saw today, one of the exchanges is gonna be getting into sports betting. Another one is getting involved into, you know, a lot of them are involved in crypto. We’re focused on solely on commodities and physical commodities mostly. And so we’re looking at a lot of inbounds from customers telling us that the other exchanges just haven’t haven’t really answered the bell on innovation, answered the bell on new products and and bringing better risk management management tools to the marketplace.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:07:05] This is exciting. And I noticed on your website that you also have critical minerals. How is the critical minerals playing out in your contracts?

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:07:14] Yeah, it that’s a good question. The the two contracts we launched, both nickel sulfate and lithium carbonate are deliverable, as I said before. They really I’d say in lithium, the market we’re a little bit early on that. When you talk to all of the enthusiastic firms that are involved in lithium development markets, and that includes a lot of the big energy companies now, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, they’re all involved in some way, shape or form in the the processing of lithium due to the as a byproduct coming out of their drill waste. But the pro the development of the processing facilities outside of China has been is still in in development. And so we know we’re a little bit early, but we do know we’re the only lithium carbonate contract outside of China that can be deliverable and based on US dollars. And so that’s something that the marketplace is eventually it is huge. And the marketplace is gonna need it. And we think that that’s gonna start trading really soon.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:08:05]  I’m all in on the tariff war with President Trump trying to take America back and put America first again. I think it’s phenomenal. I think most people did not understand that all the other countries in the world have been doing tariffs and we just got to get play catch up. And now it’s like wait a minute, tariffs actually might work, but we need to get control again of our own processing. And you may be at the forefront of saving our carcass.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:08:33] Well, I think, you know, whether it’s in the US or globally, Stewart, when you look at how if you take if you take a step back maybe twenty, thirty years or more, when you look at how refineries were financed, how pipelines were financed, how recently liquefaction terminals were financed, a bank that goes into do that and at any of those facilities wants to look at a pricing curve and say, okay, what’s going to be my risk on price going out 10 years on my financing deal? Well, without a futures contract, it’s almost impossible to figure that. Because most, if not all futures markets have a forward curve in pricing. A banker could say, I’m looking out five years on Abex LNG. I know that there’s a good chance that the pricing, you know, it’ll be volatile, it will change, but at least right now, when I write my financing deal, I can peg it to a number and say, This is what the number, you know, this is what I I can look at from a return based on my investment in a in a a lithium carbonate processing facility, in an LNG like liquefaction terminal. So these are important things. And these are how are how infrastructure deals are are built in not only the US but globally. Wow.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:09:36] I’ll tell you what this is exciting times for you guys over

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:09:39] We’re really excited. We’re really excited. You know, it’s it’s taken a lot of work. We have great investors and so that that part of you know, they understand what we’re building. Who they know that we’re, you know, one of of few, a handful of of regulated futures markets that are out in the marketplace developing new products and innovating. So yeah, we’re very fortunate. We have great leadership, but also a great great group of investors with our firm also.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:10:03] So in regulatory issues with the the whole trading thing, that is a mind numbing event. How do you survive? What do you do to keep sanity through that process? That is a tough one, man.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:10:18] You have to be patient. Right now, so we chose Singapore as our home because the regulator MAS not only is is a great regulator, which I’ve had experience with for probably 25 years, but also because of where the products that we were looking at, including LNG and gold and battery materials, was really two-thirds of the world population lives east of the Suez Canal. And so for us, we’ve seen that we’ve seen that region lacking in innovation in new products and risk management tools in gold, for instance. We launched a gold futures contract this summer, and right now we’re trading 1500 lots on average a day. And there was a lot of gold futures markets that have been tried over the years in Asia, in Dubai and some in Singapore. This is the first one that’s been successful so far knock on wood. We’ve been very you know, very happy with the results, but we think we have a winner. And the thing that we did was look at timing. There was issues, I think as you’re familiar with in the dislocation of gold pricing. If you look at, you know, we’re talking about energy, but gold is an important part of the marketplace. And you’ve had this right, and you’ve had disruptions between Europe and the US in the delivery of spot gold versus futures over the past year, year plus, and we’re seeing it in silver now. And so the marketplace needed a location where you could have your spot gold and your futures in the same vault, basically. And that’s what we’ve built in Singapore. It’s the only one that’s available globally on any gold market. And we’ll be doing the same with the silver markets very, very soon too.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:11:41] Wow. With the net zero and geopolitical stuff, I I have been talking about for a while now that I’m seeing a bifurcation between two markets right now. The EU, Canada, and the UK and Australia are following the net zero energy policies and trading practices. And I see that a bifurcation with the President Trump heading to Hungary to try to negotiate a peace with Russia. I see with the Siberia two pipeline coming on, the ballpark 11% to 19% of LNG and natural gas that the EU was buying is gonna go to China. So I I see that there is a bifurcation. A new trading block could be the Middle East, India and Asia and the United States. I did not have that on my bingo card last year. I mean, I’m like sitting here kind of going, wait a minute. And now I’m even seeing that President Trump may be talking to President Putin about putting a tunnel under up in Alaska for opening up trade. I’m like, holy cow, Batman, I did not have any of this on here. And India is such a huge growth opportunity. I mean, this is amazing.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:13:00] I was just just as an aside, I was just in India about three weeks ago from my first trip there in quite a number of years. And it’s changed dramatically in probably 20 years, my 20 years of in-between visits from a markets perspective on how they are looking at engaging with global markets and commodities and financial markets. I spent a day in Ahmabad, which is in Gurjara province, and they have a city there called Gift City that is now the only location in in in India where traders can trade outbound of India into global markets. And again, for not having that on wasn’t on our hands card either. And we we we we went in the we went there with some some partners and got introductions to probably a handful of prop or market maker trading firms. But in in Gift City, there’s over a thousand trading firms there now that they’ve located there to trade and some big names too that are that are Western, Western trading firms that are located there to take advantage of the the technology that they’ve built and infrastructure, the tax situation they have. They’re trying to build it into a mini Dubai. They have a little bit of ways to go, but there are a lot of trading firms there. And again, we didn’t anticipate that opportunity for us to connect with that trading community who are, you know, very familiar with commodities globally and now are looking to to new markets like ours to to use their expertise to to get engaged in markets.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:14:23] You know, we would not not had this conversation, you know, six months ago with President Trump going over and meeting with the president of yeah and and Putin and and and having Orban there as well. I did not see this one coming. And I’m quite happy to see the end of the war. I think that the losers in the commodity market might be the EU. If they don’t change their policies, I don’t know how that’s gonna impact you guys.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:14:55] Yeah, I mean, we don’t you know, obviously try we’re like like we do with markets, we try to remain neutral and just look for our customers to tell us where we should be going with new markets and looking to help them develop new risk management tools. If the EU you know, goes down the road they are, you know, we’ll probably have an opportunity to to bring products to them like our LNG from the US. I mean, there’s over 30 cargoes a week now being exported from the US Gulf that’s that are going to global markets, not just the EU. And so there are opportunities for for the EU and trading firms and and and governments in the EU to use products like ours to manage that risk better. So there’s gonna be risk there. And so when happens in a geopolitical situation, there’s always gonna be volatility. That’s gonna lead to market risk. The real trick is to how to manage that market risk. What tools are available in the marketplace and what levers can you pull to use those tools to manage price risk and to manage volatility and counterparty risk. And that’s where exchanges like ourselves and with the new products that we’ve that we’ve launched and innovative products that will help markets like the EU hopefully get through those bumps in the road and manage their risk better.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:16:04] You know, Secretary Chris Wright, I’ve I’ve said for a long time now that I think Secretary Chris Wright is one of the coolest cats on the planet. You know, I’ve I’ve personally got to to interview him four times and met him a few times and arranged trying to arrange another trip to DC to go see him. But when you sit back and take a look, you’ve got Doug Bergham, Secretary of the Interior, you’ve got Lee Zeldon. I call them the three horsemen of the energy dominance apocalypse. I really think these three horsemen can can get it done. But are you seeing that we can double? I I I’m over here kind of going it the math I even though I went to Oklahoma State and I keep teasing myself that I can barely speak English, you know, the math doesn’t math up because next decade just is announcing that they’re gonna invest another I think billion or so. I just wrote an article on it this morning. And we’ve there’s a bunch of money that’s gotta be invested for us to double our LNG output. That’s a lot of output to history.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:17:04] It is. And you see, I mean, you’re seeing the the development of the liquefaction, the export terminals quite ra still quite rapidly. So there is, I guess, money to be made in the business. Although when you look at you know domestic pipeline gas at $3 with a $3 handle on it, and you look at LNG at 10, I think we hear it from a lot of the midstream folks in the US that they want to get better value for their gas. And at $3, it’s not really there. But at 10, 10 or 11, they could they can definitely make better margins on that. And I do think that’s why you’re seeing so much more activity in in in exports of LNG or the continued development of FID projects where they can can get exports out to the marketplace. And that’s that’s an important part of of the US and North America providing that certainty and that security of energy to the global marketplace.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:17:51] Do you see your group with AI changing so fast and the demand in molecules changing? This is a huge issue. ‘Cause it you know, it used to be that the oil and gas we’ve seen a steady supply of natural gas rigs in the United States ’cause the molecule change. The demand for natural gas is gonna be here for quite a while. So

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:18:14] Yeah, we would agree with that for sure.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:18:16] That in that in a commodity sense is a good thing for the United States, but where do you see the the overall arching global demand? I mean, I love the the LNG like Vietnam just put out their LNG to electricity plant. Love those kind of things. Seeing that kind of thing, I would love to see an LNG to electricity plant in Hawaii, but they’re burning fuel oil. Go figure that out. 60% and here’s how here’s paradise, and they’re burning fuel oil.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:18:50] It really is. Yeah. It’s it’s I think you’ll see as long as there there’s you know an opportunity to invest and it’s free markets driven, you’ll see continued investment in the US. I think we you haven’t seen any pullback on that, even where gas is in the US at three dollars, right? You’re not gonna you haven’t seen any let up in in the development of new fields, new liquefaction terminals. So there is money to be made there and you know the the amount of exports again that we’re seeing now to the US is quite significant and it’s continuing to grow.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:19:18] What do you see coming around for Q a one of next year?

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:19:22] I do see I do see that technology will be an important part and driver of maybe making more efficient the global markets across all products. We’re involved in some some new technologies that that haven’t been really deployed in the global futures markets. If you if you think about global futures markets, it goes back way, way, way back to when they were sitting on curbs in the U in New York City or in Chicago trading commodities mostly agricultural. The markets certainly have changed from them, but I think over the past 20 years, the financial part of it, the managing of risk and capital and collateral for for trades is really hasn’t really changed that much. And from an ABAC side, we’re developing some new digital and and technological advances in making those markets more efficient, using collateral better, a better use of of your positions to to really make the make the the trading or the management of risk in these markets a lot better, a better run. It hasn’t it needs to be changed, it hasn’t been changed. The futures markets haven’t done anything as much as they say, you know, you can do real time trading. Real time trading is basically looking at your position on your clearing members portal. The the actual movement of margin money or collateral to manage that risk is still T plus one. And so that hasn’t changed. And so that’s something that we’re gonna be, I think at the forefront of being innovative to bring these new tools to the marketplace.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:20:42] That’s exciting. How do people get a hold of that?

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:20:45] So our our website is abex.exchange. My email address is joe.rea at abex.exchange. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter. You can reach out to me and we can help get better people get better educated on our products, our technology, and how to access our new innovative markets.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:21:04] Well, this was a lot of fun. I’ll tell you what, thank you for your time. I hope to have you back because I’ve got about nineteen thousand different questions now that we’ve had this introduction discussion here and I I see some great things for you guys rolling out next year.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:21:19] Yeah, we’re excited, Stuart. Yep. And I really do appreciate you having us on here. This is our first time here. We just want to make sure that the marketplace understands the opportunities they have to engage with new players like ourselves, where by the sometimes the incumbents just don’t look at all the all the angles and all the issues in the marketplace.

 

Stuart Turley – Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:21:35] Well, I appreciate the education. We’ll have all your show notes and all the information in there and look forward to visiting with you again soon.

 

Joe Raia – Chief Commercial Officer at ACFEC [00:21:42] Thanks. Same, Stuart. Thanks very much for having us.