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.
In keeping with its geographical position directly between Saudi Arabia on its west and Iran on its east, Qatar’s geopolitical positioning is a tricky thing…
A long-delayed deal between Saudi Arabia’s flagship oil company, Saudi Aramco, and Indian conglomerate, Reliance Industries, looks closer to going ahead following the recent appointment…
At June’s G7 meeting, U.S. President, Joe Biden, received the backing of the world’s seven largest advanced economies (comprised of the U.S., the U.K., Germany,…
A number of false assumptions have continued to cloud the coverage of the ongoing re-negotiation between the U.S. and Iran of a new iteration of…
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the key Arab state at the centre of the U.S.’s Middle East pushback against increasing Chinese and Russian influence…
For decades, the true numbers relating to Saudi Arabia’s level of crude oil reserves and production have been a subject of much debate and confusion,…
News last week that U.K. oil super-major, BP, is working on a plan to spin off its operations in Iraq’s supergiant Rumaila oil field into…
Although Oman’s fiscal breakeven price per barrel of Brent crude oil has fallen to US$61 this year, the fact that it was over US$90 on…
The relationship between the two great indigenous powers in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia and Iran – has become significantly more nuanced in the…
Given the U.S.’s broad scaling-down of its on-the-ground operations in the Middle East over the past five years, a specific function of which is ExxonMobil’s…
Saudi Arabia has lined up 15 banks to manage new multi-billion dollar bond offerings for its flagship oil and gas company, Aramco, according to a…
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq has played the main powers in the Middle East off against each other - the U.S.…
According to senior political and economic sources who work closely with the current Iranian government exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, the U.S. has…
Iran’s Goreh-Jask oil pipeline is due to ship its first crude oil in June, with all construction having finished last week. This pipeline will enable…
A number of peculiar things have happened in the Middle East in the past few weeks involving the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, all…
The U.S. and Iran have been engaged in on-off talks about the resuscitation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the ‘nuclear deal’…
The starting point for all sound intelligence analysis of a particular action is to identify who gains from it and what it is that they…
Central to the expansion of Chinese and Russian influence via Iran into the space in the Middle East vacated by the U.S. since former U.S.…
In the same way that the U.S.’s global hydrocarbons power has been turbo-boosted by the rise of its shale energy industry, which began with gas…
There are three key reasons why the development of a world-class petrochemicals (petchems) sector is vital to Iraq’s future. First, its heavy reliance on crude…