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.
Ever since its occupation of Iraq in 2003 began to turn sour, the U.S. has been fighting a rearguard action against Iran cementing its influence…
Just ahead of the August 2020 visit to Washington of Iraq Prime Minister, Mustafa al- Kadhimi, promised then-U.S. President, Donald Trump, that he would allow…
According to senior economic and political sources close to the Iranian government exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, Tehran is now messaging senior figures…
Given the mass exodus of major Western oil companies from Iraq in recent months, and no sign of this reversing any time soon, Russia and…
Saudi Aramco’s request for bids from local and international companies to build out a water desalination plant project in the Jafurah shale gas field brings…
Given that no real change has resulted from last week’s elections in Iraq – the fervently anti-US radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is still the de…
The meeting last week between Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Alexander Novak, and Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, to discuss broadening and deepening…
Last week, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive officer, Amin Nasser, said that the company expects to boost its oil production capacity to 13 million barrels per…
Last week saw the already broadening and deepening ties between the UAE and India extend further. With the announcement in August 2020 of the U.S.-brokered…
The last few days saw the first meeting of the new iteration of the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC), with the agenda being ‘the five-year…
The resignation of Libya’s deputy oil minister, Refaat al-Abbar, last week threatens to make the current uneasy situation in Libya’s oil sector even worse. With…
Iran’s approval last week for full membership to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is the surest sign yet that any U.S. efforts to keep it,…
As a corollary of its new target for oil production of seven million barrels per day (bpd) by 2025, Iraq has repeatedly stated that it…
In line with the UAE’s role as a principal member of the U.S.’s new Middle East strategy to counter China’s increasing influence in the region,…
Kuwait’s plans announced last week to invest at least US$6.1 billion in exploration over the next five years in order to increase production to a…
The Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is the key corporate proxy at the centre of the U.S.’s Middle East pushback against increasing Chinese and…
With its crude oil production already the subject of various ongoing political divisions since the onset of civil war in 2011, another rift has opened…
Irrespective of how quickly a new iteration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – ‘nuclear deal’ – is signed between Iran and the…
Following its loss of the world’s number one liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter position to Australia in January, Qatar announced a new output target of…
Oman occupies a strategically vital position in the geography of the Middle East, possessing long coastlines along the Gulf of Oman and along the Arabian…