Simon Watkins is a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author. He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for Credit Lyonnais, and later Director of Forex at Bank of Montreal. He was then Head of Weekly Publications and Chief Writer for Business Monitor International, Head of Fuel Oil Products for Platts, and Global Managing Editor of Research for Renaissance Capital in Moscow. He has written extensively on oil and gas, Forex, equities, bonds, economics and geopolitics for many leading publications, and has worked as a geopolitical risk consultant for a number of major hedge funds in London, Moscow, and Dubai. In addition, he has authored five books on finance, oil, and financial markets trading published by ADVFN and available on Amazon, Apple, and Kobo.
As the world’s largest net importer of crude oil and other liquids since September 2013, any significant variation in Chinese demand for oil resonates quickly…
With the Western-leaning, reformist agenda of Iran President, Hassan Rouhani, neutered by the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action…
In his relatively brief stint in power, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has managed to destroy the Saudi economy in record time while…
Iraq is finally moving ahead with plans to develop its associated and non-associated gas resources in the next two to three years, according to a…
Qatar’s recent decision to go ahead with bold plans for the North Dome, its supergiant non-associated gas reservoir, together with corollary deals to secure massive…
Since firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr became the effective leader of Iraq after the victory of his ‘Sairoon’ (‘Marching Forward’) power bloc in the May 2018…
Saudi Arabia has instigated two oil price wars in the last decade and has lost both. Given its apparent inability to learn from its mistakes…
The South Pars non-associated natural gas field is at the core of Iran’s strategy to produce at least one billion cubic metres per day (bcm/d)…
Given the massive negative hit taken by Saudi Arabia’s economy as a result of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s oil price war, aimed at destroying…
Given that China’s oil demand has now recovered from the COVID-19 outbreak to even higher levels than before, Iran is operating at full tilt to…
With Rosneft having effectively taken control of Kurdistan’s oil and gas sector in northern Iraq through the deal done in November 2017, Russia had been…
Even before the latest slew of announcements regarding the agreement by Saudi Arabia’s flagship oil and gas company, Aramco, to acquire a 70 percent stake…
It may well be the case that the U.S. shale sector has cut over US$50 billion from its planned spending this year, the number of…
A small and tedious-looking announcement of the ratification of a bylaw relating to the issuance of securities appeared on Iranian government-affiliated websites last week and…
At no time since Ibn Saud first consolidated his Arabian conquests into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 has the ruling Saud dynasty faced…
Despite – or perhaps because of - the global overhang in liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, a weak demand profile, and ongoing uncertainty in the…
Construction is now fully under way of Iran’s game-changing oil pipeline that will be able to transport huge quantities of oil and petrochemicals from its…
With the U.S.’s patience wearing thin on its dealings with neighbouring Iran, endemic corruption still prevalent in both the south of the country and in…
President Donald Trump is considering all options available to him to make the Saudis pay for the oil price war as the crash that followed…
Reaching natural gas production of one billion cubic metres per day (Bcm/d) has been one of the three core hydrocarbons resource strategies of Iran since…