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.
The increasingly close relationship on multiple levels between Russia and China became obvious to anyone with an interest in such matters last July when the…
Even before the current spate of Saudi-led lunacy in the shape of the oil price war with the two biggest oil producers in the world…
Quite aside from the subtler elements of the oil deal announced late last week that are likely to undermine its ability to stave off further…
This week is scheduled to see the lockdown of Wuhan - the Chinese city in which the global coronavirus pandemic began – end, following a…
Under its effective leader, firebrand ultra-nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Iraq is theoretically committed to not allowing itself to become overly dependent on any one country.…
Over the past week or so, China has eased quarantine measures in Wuhan – the city in which the global coronavirus pandemic began – with…
Given the twin facts that Oman has only around five billion barrels of estimated proved oil reserves (barely the 22nd largest in the world) but…
In the current straitened sanctions period, Iran’s focus in its oil sector is broadly to increase the capacity of its fields in West Karoun and…
U.S. President Donald Trump is facing increasing calls from some U.S. senators and congressmen to pressure Saudi Arabia into ending the oil price war, with…
One might reasonably posit that when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) signalled that Saudi Arabia was once again going to produce oil to the…
Rosgeologia’s seismic surveys and other related work since the 70s to now indicate that there is at least 513 billion barrels of oil and gas…
Those with a functioning memory may have thought that last week’s decision by Saudi Arabia to maximise oil production to crash oil prices and bankrupt…
Iran is positioning itself to benefit from the fallout from Saudi Arabia’s latest disastrous handling of the global oil markets. The Kingdom’s ability to metaphorically…
Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas giant, Aramco, has been given the go-ahead to launch the Jafurah shale gas field project, which will be the biggest…
Balancing its ability to cause chaos in the global oil markets by closing/disrupting the Strait of Hormuz (through which flows around 35 per cent of…
With a fiscal breakeven oil price of just over US$87 per barrel (pb) of Brent this year, around 85 per cent of its revenues still…
Ever since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was agreed in principle in 2015 by Iran and the P5+1 group of nations (U.S., U.K.,…
Historically, Russia goes to great lengths to hide or disguise its strategic intentions but it clearly feels empowered enough in the Middle East to very…
Given the gaps available to Iran in the current U.S. sanctions environment to continue to export its oil – principally via rebranding as Iraq oil…
Sources from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia last week let it be known that trial production of 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) would start at the…