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.
Last week’s signing of a 10-year purchase and sales agreement by the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) and Qatar Petroleum (QP) for 2 million…
Despite a 44 percent drop in its 2020 profits, the Saudi Arabian government has instructed majority-state-owned Saudi Aramco to stick to the US$75 billion per…
Iraq remains the key cover through which Iran transports its oil to the rest of the world, as has been well-documented by OilPrice.com, so the…
After the first oil price war launched by the Saudis against the then-nascent U.S. shale sector in 2014, Washington took the view that the Kingdom…
China’s annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) last week set an annual economic growth target that – at ‘above 6 per cent’ -…
As highlighted in OilPrice.com just after the last major attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities on 14 September 2019, there are many positive aspects from…
Whether the Iranian leadership thinks that new U.S. President Joe Biden is set to go easier on the Islamic Republic or on China is unclear…
The world’s top liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, Qatar, has long occupied a political position in the Middle East that has neither been decisively aligned…
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…