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.
Given Iran’s huge natural gas reserves, its new-found rapprochement with fellow gas supergiant Qatar, and Russia’s strategy to expedite the ‘Gas OPEC’ global supply and…
With China’s Fourth Plenum meeting of its ruling Communist Party having ended in October and the U.S. 2020 presidential election campaign gathering pace, both sides…
One of the many disasters for Saudi Arabia that has come after the accession of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) as its effective leader…
Following the temporary withdrawal of China from Phase 11 of Iran’s supergiant South Pars gas field due to the political backlash that the deal –…
One thing that professional bank and fund traders know that others may not is to absolutely never trust the credit rating agencies in making trading…
One of the most humiliating aspects for Iran of the last sanctions era was that it was dependent on the whim of the U.S. for…
Given that China has put its expansion into Iran on hold for the time being due to the backlash in Iran on the extent of…
Having secured pivotal economic and political influence in recent months with Iraq (both north and south), Syria, Iran (and by dint of this, the rest…
Following a political backlash in Iran over details of its plans to make Iran effectively a client state through various multi-layered oil and gas deals,…
By all accounts, major general Qasem Soleimani – commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) crack ‘Quds’ force that is responsible for foreign military…
From almost the very moment in 2016 when Saudi Arabia first announced that it was to float its state-owned oil and gas behemoth, Saudi Aramco,…
Iran’s priority in continuing to optimise its oil industry exports despite ongoing U.S. sanctions is to push the pace of development firstly of the multiple…
Last week’s agreement by the London-based oil and gas company TechnipFMC to pay US$5.1 million to settle an Iraq-related corruption case with the U.S. Securities…
With Iraq’s oil production in August hitting an all-time record high of 4.97 million barrels per day (bpd), according to local Iraqi sources, the country…
Even if Saudi Arabia’s claim about how swiftly it will recover from the recent attack on its oil infrastructure can be believed – which it…
Saudi Arabia’s comments about its hydrocarbons industry have long been regarded by industry experts as being as believable as China’s comments about its economic growth:…
China and Russia are sewing up whatever oil and gas fields and accompanying infrastructure that they can in Iran and Iraq, as Iraq tries to…
A sliver of news from Iraq passed almost unnoticed by global media last week: Stroytransgaz has signed a preliminary contract with the oil ministry in…
With the U.S, Russia, and China all jostling for position in Iraq’s oil and gas industry both north and south, Iraq’s oil ministry last week…
The latest U.S. sanctions against Iran’s oil shipping network are the latest sign that the ongoing confrontation between the U.S. and Iran operates on a…