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.
Iraq has potentially huge gas reserves but its failure so far to properly develop them has led to three key problems for itself and the…
The U.S. and its key allies on the West and the East continue to tighten the noose around Russian exports of oil and gas and…
Given the festive time of year, it is perhaps fitting that senior Iraqi politicians are again pushing for the full activation of the ‘Iraq-China Framework…
The rise in the benchmark Brent oil price from just over US$72 per barrel (pb) to above US$80pb in a week highlights that the risk…
Events often have a way of highlighting the circular nature of time rather than its linearity. An extraordinarily notable recent example of this was this…
Qatar remains by far the biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the Middle East, and one of the top three in the world,…
Since the mid-1990s, China has been the key global buyer of multiple commodities needed to power its economic growth. The purpose of this growth was…
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the race has been on to secure as much of the world’s regular liquefied natural gas…
Having had to make his travel plans even more furtively than usual - given the International Criminal Court arrest warrant out for him due to…
From the imposition of the first major international sanctions against its energy sector following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has been developing a vast network…
After long delays, last week saw OPEC+ announce oil production cuts way below what many oil traders had been expecting, causing the benchmark Brent oil…
Preliminary estimates suggested that Iraq’s Eridu oil field holds between 7-10 billion barrels of reserves. Senior Russian oil industry sources spoken to exclusively by OilPrice.com last week…
The risk premium for oil prices resulting from the ongoing Israel-Hamas War has not risen as dramatically as it did after Russia invaded Ukraine on…
Any major project connected to Iraq’s oil and gas sector has an incalculably greater significance than just extracting oil or gas. Situated in the heart…
At the core of Russia’s hydrocarbon-centric geopolitical strategies for the future are its huge Arctic oil and gas reserves. And while global tensions stay high…
Qatar has long been forced to play a delicate diplomatic balancing act between the two great Middle Eastern powers and their principal superpower sponsors, positioned…
In line with Moscow and Beijing’s objective of keeping the West out of energy deals in Iraq to keep Baghdad closer to the new Iran-Saudi…
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, last week called on the Islamic members of OPEC to halt oil exports to Israel immediately. Given that Israel buys…
Rather like the man falling from the 20th floor of an office block saying ‘So far, so good’ when asked how he is doing, so…
With the U.S.’s current primary Middle East focus being on trying to deter a widening of the Israel-Hamas War, China and Russia have been busy…