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.
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, met at length last week in Riyadh after which they released statements…
Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Alexander Novak, headed a high-level delegation to Iran last week, with the Kremlin-orchestrated invasion of Ukraine still in full swing. According…
Long before the re-emergence of the ‘Pan-Arab’ ideology now increasingly evident among several leading Middle Eastern countries, Qatar had sought to go its own way,…
Iraq’s Oil Minister, Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar, last week stated that the country aims to increase its crude oil production to 6 million barrels per day (bpd)…
The huge discrepancy between China’s massive economic growth and its minimal oil and gas reserves made it the big global backstop bid for crude oil…
Oman occupies an extraordinarily significant geographical position in the world and thus is of equally significant political importance to the two global power blocs: the…
A key factor in the upper band of the benchmark crude oil trading ranges over the past weeks is market concern over a ban of…
It is a matter of profound irritation to the U.S. that countries around the world will not play the roles that Washington has designated for…
The passing on Thursday by a U.S. Senate committee of the ‘No Oil Producing or Exporting Cartels’ (NOPEC) bill is the surest sign yet that…
With Brent crude oil still holding above the key US$100.00 per barrel support level, Iraq is looking to optimise its oil output, including from those…
Iran is moving ahead with a US$500-million contract for the production development and enhanced oil recovery from its strategically vital South Pars Oil Layer signed…
Since the earliest days of its Islamic Republic from 1979, Iran has looked to its petrochemicals sector as being a key to its ‘resistance economy’…
Given the relatively delicate supply and demand balance currently at play in the oil market, and broader geopolitical nervousness over what comes next in the…
From almost the very moment that U.S. President Joe Biden took office on 20 January 2021, several major Middle Eastern countries have become more overt…
The visit at the beginning of this year of Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, to the White House, and his meeting in March…
Like the first sparrow of spring, Iraq’s reversal of all promises made to the U.S. in order to secure another waiver to import electricity and…
Up until recently, Washington thought India could finally and definitively be brought on to its side in the evolving power struggle between the U.S. and…
For several years, China and Russia have been building an alternative world order to that offered by the U.S. and its allies, as analysed in…
Following two recent landmark legal rulings by the Supreme Court of the Federal Government of Iraq (FGI) in Baghdad, news emerged last week that Iraq’s…
Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant, Saudi Aramco, is looking at several further opportunities to expand its downstream dealings with China, according to recent comments from…