Oil giants team up for online mega-marketplace

The oil industry will be the latest to move its procurement to an online marketplace in a move that could be worth $125bn a year.

A consortium made of 14 partners including BP Amoco, Dow Chemical, Shell, Statoil and TotalFinaElf, claim they will have the Web-based market up and running by the third quarter of this year.

The site will be run by an independent company, which the group will float on the stock exchange. Commerce One is providing the technology for the deal.

We'll have more on this story later.