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.
News out last week that the relatively new development of the Atrush oil field in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) had passed the…
Last week’s announcement from the director of integrated planning at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Karim Zobeidi that the South Pars Oil Layer (SPOL)…
Iran has entered the ongoing negotiations over the on-off budget disbursements-for-oil deal between the Federal Government of Iraq (FGI) in Baghdad and the government of…
Two comments last week highlight the dangerous security impasse in which Iran and the U.S. find themselves. The first was from Iran’s spiritual leader, the…
Given the greater willingness of two of Iran’s long-time allies, China and Russia, to defy the U.S.’s re-imposed sanctions against the Islamic Republic – in…
It seems that as fast as any positive news appears about the massive and under-developed oil and gas resources of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan…
Two factors make the urgent build-out of Iraq’s ailing and inadequate oil export infrastructure more essential than ever. The first is the increasingly dangerous security…
As the trade war with the U.S. continues to escalate, China has re-engaged with Iran on three key projects and is weighing the use of…
Barely a month goes past without another indication of the vast gas potential still largely untapped in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Last…
In a potentially catastrophic escalation of tensions in the Persian Gulf, Russia plans to use Iran’s ports in Bandar-e-Bushehr and Chabahar as forward military bases…
In a remarkably prescient move just after the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran at the beginning of 2016, China signed a massive land…
Saudi Arabia is struggling in its key economic and geopolitical ambition to position itself as the key substitute in Asia in general and China in…
Last week saw two apparently independent major events occur in Iraq centred on its gas sector but a senior oil and gas industry source who…
The recent announcement that Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar Group is to set up an office in the U.K. to oversee its multi-billion dollar renewable investments there…
Facing vigorously enforced U.S. sanctions directed principally on oil, Iran is focussing on the less targeted strategic areas in its hydrocarbons business, notably continuing to…
In line with its targets for increasing crude oil production to 6.2 million barrels per day (bpd) by end-2020 and 9 million bpd by end-2023,…
Last week Saudi Arabia announced that it is to launch its first Euro-denominated bonds shortly, following the recent bond issue from Saudi Aramco. At around…
Last week saw Japan’s Mitsui and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation agree to buy a 10% stake in Novatek’s Arctic LNG (liquefied natural…
Iran’s parliament last week passed a draft bill allowing for a massive increase in the number of oil and gas condensates refineries in the country,…
Last week a small news item went largely unnoticed by the international media but it hints at the real – and until now unpublished -…