Powder keg year for geopolitics
Iran, Venezuela and North Korea are all potential flashpoints in 2018
The risk landscape in 2018 is being pulled in two competing directions: on one hand, global economic growth has been revised upwards for the best outlook since the global financial crisis. On the other, geopolitical competition is at its punchiest since the end of the Cold War, with material (if still modest) threats of both trade wars and real wars. This dynamic, explored in our RiskMap 2018 forecast, has been bullish for oil prices since mid-2017, but 2018 is far from a one-way bet. In terms of sheer physical fundamentals, the most obvious factor continues to be the predictable response by US shale drillers (and their bankers) to rising prices. Shale drilling activity continues to neatly l
Also in this section
10 September 2024
The August/September issue of Petroleum Economist is out now!
10 September 2024
The third part in the second chapter of our history of oil looks at the US shale revolution and ‘declaration of cooperation’ that created OPEC+
9 September 2024
We pick up the story of the history of oil with the response of consumer countries to the 1973 embargo, with the creation of the IEA proving the adage that every action has a reaction
9 September 2024
Continuing our 90th anniversary deep dive into the history of oil, the first part of our second chapter covers the post-war world and the beginnings of OPEC
