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.
With Asian spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices having risen to unprecedented levels in January and the outlook remaining extremely robust Iran believes now is…
With a new man in the White House, Iraq’s Prime Minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, appears to believe that Iraq can begin a completely new cycle of…
First output is now being produced by Russia’s number two gas producer (after state-owned Gazprom) – Novatek - from its much-awaited fourth train at the…
Tehran’s broad strategy regarding the U.S. is to seek to push new President Joe Biden back into a non-renegotiated nuclear deal, which favours Iran, whilst…
Given the extreme unlikelihood of the U.S. returning to the currently structured Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Iran’s unwillingness to renegotiate the deal…
The release of a major report last week by the International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighting that India will make up the biggest share of energy…
It was no coincidence that just over a month after staunch U.S. ally-Israel and the United Arab Emirates declared that they would normalise relations and…
Since the formation of the new system of governance in Iraq in 2003 immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein there have been a slew…
A key complicating factor in the ‘if and when’ conjecture over the U.S. and Iran re-opening talks on the Join Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)…
More shares in flagship oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco (Aramco), may be released for sale to the public if conditions are right, said the…
Facing a budget deficit this year alone that may reach 18 per cent of GDP, according to S&P Global Ratings, and budget deficits averaging at…
The geopolitically game-changing Goreh-Jask pipeline project saw a major advance last week with the commencement last week of offshore pipe-laying operations. The implementation of this…
There are three major troubling factors for new U.S. President Joe Biden. In the recently agreed US$2 billion five–year prepayment oil supply deal between the…
Iran has been looking in earnest to poach major oil supply contracts from Saudi Arabia since the Tehran-backed Houthi attacks on two of the Kingdom’s…
Iraq announced two deals with countries that Iran hopes can be gradually moved further into its sphere of influence. One of the two, Lebanon, is…
Iran has been waiting since former U.S. President, Donald Trump, unilaterally pulled his country out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May…
Abu Dhabi – the oil powerhouse at the centre of the U.S.’s pushback against increasing Chinese influence across the Middle East - last week further…
In line with Iraq’s currently perilous finances and with its future target of increasing crude oil production to 7 million barrels per day (bpd) by…
In tandem with Iraq’s reiterated target for crude oil production of 7 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2025, from the previous 5 mbpd, Baghdad…
Alongside the continued development of its huge West Karoun oil fields, the completion of the supergiant South Pars non-associated gas offshore sector (including the implementation…