Crude Oil Insights

As expected no major surprises. The outlook stays in low 80’s for 2010 and mid 80’s for Q4 2010, still below the 90 US$ per barrel year end number quoted by BAML earlier in Feb. I on the other hand tend to agree with Oil Trader at the Oil Trader Blog that there is no…Read more

Crude has been steadily climbing upwards in anticipation of the OPEC meeting next week on 17th March. This momentum may also get some additional fuel by the release of the Energy Information Authority’s (EIA) short term outlook report later today. This was supported by the planned seasonal shipment reduction by OPEC members of about half…Read more

Over at the Learning Corporate Finance Blog, I posted a new free online course on risk management within the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical. A short six session introduction to a risk management framework for the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical industry focused on managing crude oil price volatility for Oil refiners, Polymer and PVC manufacturers and…Read more

Understanding Commodities Risk – out in print early March 2010 The principles are simple. Document the supply and demand of a resource, the psychology of its market and participant behaviour and you should have a handle on how prices move. Identify any leading indicators and your price prediction model is complete. Interesting enough while commodities…Read more

The best piece of news that I saw this morning. While it will probably take two decades for this dream to come true, there is at least “a liquid helium cooled design” out there that will run on nuclear waste. While the world may run out of oil, it is not going to run out…Read more

Events to watch out for this week that will have an impact on pricing and trading behavior for Oil, Euro and possibly Gold. Federal Reserve Chairman testimony begins tomorrow and irrespective of what he says will move currency (and by definition) oil markets. API and EIA crude, oil and distillates inventories numbers will also come…Read more

Euro USD The Euro rose 0.2% to $1.3633, from a nine month low of $1.3444 on Monday.     Closing rate against the US$ on Monday $ 1.3626. Monday’s bottom at $1.3575.   Oil Crude oil rose 66 cents to $80.47 a barrel, before falling back to just above $80. Oil fell from six-week highs to trade…Read more

Understanding Commodities Risk The principles are simple. Document the supply and demand of a resource, the psychology of its market and participant behaviour and you should have a handle on how prices move. Identify any leading indicators and your price prediction model is complete. Interesting enough while commodities markets are older than time, at the…Read more

The US economy is picking steam, the Chinese economy is heating up enough for the central bank to step in and signal the market that they are still in control, the Eurozone is in trouble, Australia is booming and Oil is hovering around 80 dollars a barrel this weekend. Does this mean that we will…Read more

Here what we covered on Saturday at the Treasury Risk crash course at the Karachi Marriot (thank you Agnes for the notes). The one day Treasury Risk workshop in Dubai is now locked in on the 18th of March 2010 at the Dusit Thani in Dubai. You can download the nomination form here for the…Read more