The Oil Market Cycle - General introduction

The Oil market is made up of many sectors, e.g. production, demand, shipping, supply and stock build/depletion. The rational behind the concept of The Oil Market Cycle is that all of these sectors are interlinked. A complete understanding of each sector of the cycle is needed to be able to make the right trading and / or investment decisions.

A major problem facing most people in their effort to analyse The Oil Market Cycle is where to locate relevant information. Facts and Statistics for each sector of the cycle are scattered among numerous sources, can be difficult to obtain and are often only available in an unhelpful format.

The first objective of Norwegian Energy is to collect and organise all of the relevant information, and present it in one easily accessible format, for all of the sectors.

Our second objective is to give an understanding of the overall oil market picture through comments and comparisons made available when new statistical information is updated, drawing on Norwegian Energy's extensive experience in the oil market.

The Oil Market Cycle - Available Information

• The World Fundamentals - Production, Supply and demand.
• The USA, China, Japan, Korea, Europe and Atlantic Basin total - Oil and oil product stocks, imports/exports, supply and demand, yields and forward days cover.
• Singapore - Oil stock levels.
• India - Crude production and Refinery output, and natural gas production.
• Refinery Capacities - Worldwide refinery atmospheric distillation and upgrading capacities with future additions.
• Refinery Margins - Margins indicating the relative profitability for various refinery configurations and crude inputs for the four most important refining regions.
• Oil Movements - Freight rates, spot loadings and fixtures, earnings and availability.
• Oil and gas Rigs - Contract and utilization rates for the world and the most important drilling areas.
• Natural Gas - Weekly stocks and storage utilization for the USA and monthly supply, demand, imports and exports.
• Commitment of traders - Future and Option positions of crude oil, petroleum product and natural gas traders on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
• Energy Weather - Heating and Cooling Degree Days for the US, weighted by population and by heating fuels.

Regular commentaries are published on this site for the world oil supply and demand as well as for the position in the US following the weekly release of the Department of Energy figures. Other commentary is published to highlight important issues as these arise.

The Team

Bjorn Dingsor
Bjorn founded Norwegian Energy in 1988, introducing fuel swaps mainly to Scandinavian ship owners, and managing the risk using the future, forward and physical markets based on fundamental oil research. From this he started the collaboration with Morgan Stanley Commodities in 2000. Bjorn started out working for Statoil in the early 1980s, first as an analyst developing and simulating the contract price formulas for natural gas sales to Europe and later as a crude oil trader London. He also worked on the upgrading of a major refinery in Belarus in his capacity as a director of Norwegian Energy.

Ian Turner
Joined Norwegian Energy in 2002 and having engineered and rewritten the company website, operating and update procedures together with internal databases and spreadsheets, Ian is responsible for the overall operations. Previously with Lloyds Bank Plc for over 20 years undertaking various roles latterly Strategic Marketing, Business Re-engineering and Project Management.

Paulo Homem Cristo
Paulo has 10 years of experience in fundamental analysis in the energy markets, having worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, IHS/CERA and Point Carbon, before joining Norwegian Energy in 2009 to focus on the day to day report generation and related analyses. He was previously responsible for modeling European power, gas and carbon markets, and the publication of a weekly cross-commodity report. Paulo is fluent in English, French and Portuguese, and holds a Master of Science in Energy Policy from the Imperial College London.

Jasmina Bibezic
Joined Morgan Stanley in 1994 as an Analyst for the commodities group. From 1996, traded UK power and NBP NatGas. Built the Commodities Research group from 2000 until 2007, subsequently became a Power originator focusing on the UK Power market. Seconded to Norwegian Energy team in December 2009 to concentrate on managing the refinery database and expand Natural Gas coverage.

Richard Molloy
Joined Norwegian Energy in 2010 after having spent five years working as a software developer for Fujitsu Services. Holds a BSc in Computer Science and has experience in the full software development life cycle as well as customer facing technical roles. Role involves providing technical support and development for data extraction and content applications.

Dian Nel
Dian has eight years of experience in the energy sector. Before joining Norwegian Energy he was operations manager at REH PLC, a London listed renewable energy company. He was head of research for the JV between EDF Energies Nouvelles and REH PLC. He holds a B.Eng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Stellenbosch University and an MSc in Mathematical Finance from Christ Church, Oxford University. Dian is a Chartered Engineer (C.Eng), and a member of the Engineering Council UK.