The International Petrol Exchange (IPE) has become the latest exchange to adopt electronic systems to replace traditional face-to-face trading.

IPE chief executive Richard Ward says going digital is the only way the company can grow and compete with its main rival, the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This week, electronic trading on one of the London-based exchange's four primary products, Brent crude oil, started operating in parallel with the traditional pits where traders buy and sell - known as open outcry.

Other products will follow soon, with the switch to electronic trading from outcry pits being phased in, although no final date has been set.

'We haven't set a timetable for when we'll close the pits. We're going through a transition process where we'll offer parallel trading of our contracts on the screens as well as in the pits and we'll see how that's accepted by the community,' said Ward.

The exchange has adopted ICE, an electronic trading platform provided by the IPE's US parent company, IntercontinentalExchange.

'It's a browser-based technology. We're trading over the internet on a datacentre based in Atlanta, although we have a disaster recovery site in the UK,' said Ward.

ICE will enable the exchange to offer a more cost-effective and efficient trading environment, much like the London Stock Exchange, Eurex and Euronext.Liffe.

The platform will help the IPE lower costs, improve its straight-through processing, gain various clearing benefits and make more efficient use of capital.

The IPE is Europe's leading energy futures and options exchange, trading over $2bn every day through its four major energy products, which includes Brent crude, gas oil, natural gas and electricity.