---
title: Oil & Gas Markets
description: How the oil and gas market actually clears: benchmarks and price reporting, the futures curve, physical cargoes and Incoterms, the trading houses and the bank debt behind them, OPEC and the chokepoints, freight and war-risk cover, and the demand forecasts everyone argues over. Learners will be able to read a price move and say which clock it is running on — the physical barrel or the financial contract.
category: finance-economics
subcategory: economics-(social-lens)
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/oil-and-gas-markets
---

# Oil & Gas Markets

How the oil and gas market actually clears: benchmarks and price reporting, the futures curve, physical cargoes and Incoterms, the trading houses and the bank debt behind them, OPEC and the chokepoints, freight and war-risk cover, and the demand forecasts everyone argues over. Learners will be able to read a price move and say which clock it is running on — the physical barrel or the financial contract.

## Available Resources

13 Books • 4 Courses • 11 Websites • 9 Papers

## Websites

### 1. How an Oil Refinery Works

**Author:** Brian Potter

A working tour of refinery process units, tracing crude classification, atmospheric distillation, catalytic cracking, reforming and hydrotreating through a real plant, and closing on the Nelson Complexity Index that ranks how much upgrading a refinery can do.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-an-oil-refinery-works

**Tags:** refining, Nelson Complexity

### 2. Physical Oil Trading Basics (Parts 1 and 2)

**Author:** 'Dr. Shakalu' (anonymous practitioner)

A former trading-house risk manager walks a cargo through the five things that define a trade: the publication that prices it, the window, the Incoterm, the spec, the formula.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/private-equity/physical-oil-trading-basics-part-1-of-2

**Tags:** physical trading, Incoterms, pricing formulas

### 3. JKempEnergy

**Author:** John Kemp

Regular data-driven notes on crude and product inventories, fund positioning, the shape of the futures curve, refinery runs and gas storage, written by the analyst who covered energy markets as a Reuters columnist for over fifteen years.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://jkempenergy.com/

**Tags:** inventories, positioning, forward curve

### 4. Monthly Oil Market Report

**Author:** OPEC Secretariat

The only monthly balance published by the producers themselves. Read alongside the IEA rather than instead of it — the divergence is the informative object.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://publications.opec.org/momr

**Tags:** supply and demand balance, OPEC

### 5. Commodities Demystified: A Guide to Trading and the Global Supply Chain

**Author:** Trafigura

A trading house's own walk-through of the physical commodity supply chain: sourcing, storage, blending, freight, price risk management and the bank financing that underwrites each cargo. Free, and the clearest published account of how a physical trade works.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.trafigura.com/news-and-insights/publications/white-papers/2018/commodities-demystified-a-guide-to-trading-and-the-global-supply-chain-second-edition/

**Tags:** physical trading, supply chain, trade finance

### 6. World Oil Transit Chokepoints

**Author:** U.S. Energy Information Administration

EIA's data page on the Strait of Hormuz, Malacca, Bab el-Mandeb, Suez and the other maritime passages, giving the daily crude and product volumes moving through each and the alternative routes available if one closes.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/special_topics/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/

**Tags:** Hormuz, Malacca, Suez, chokepoints

### 7. Strait of Hormuz

**Author:** International Energy Agency

IEA briefing on the chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of global oil supply, covering the volumes that transit it, the limited bypass pipeline capacity, and how IEA emergency stocks would answer a disruption.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.iea.org/about/oil-security-and-emergency-response/strait-of-hormuz

**Tags:** Hormuz, energy security

### 8. AGSI — Aggregated Gas Storage Inventory

**Author:** Gas Infrastructure Europe

Daily European gas storage by country and operator, with injection and withdrawal rates and an API. The primary source behind every 'EU storage is at X%' headline.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://agsi.gie.eu/

**Tags:** European gas storage, data

### 9. Gas Research Programme

**Author:** Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

Ongoing research output from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies on gas and LNG: pricing mechanisms, contract structures, and regional market analysis. Papers are free and technical, aimed at readers who already follow European gas and global LNG trade.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.oxfordenergy.org/research-programme/gas-programme/

**Tags:** European gas, LNG markets

### 10. Commodity Markets Outlook and the Pink Sheet

**Author:** World Bank

The World Bank's twice-yearly commodity report plus the Pink Sheet, a monthly spreadsheet of roughly seventy price series covering energy, metals, fertilisers and food, with special-focus chapters on how gas prices feed fertiliser and food costs.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets

**Tags:** commodity prices, fertiliser, food security

### 11. Scenarios in the World Energy Outlook 2025

**Author:** Laura Cozzi, Tim Gould

What CPS, STEPS and NZE each assume, by the people who build them. If you do not know which scenario a headline came from, the headline is meaningless.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.iea.org/commentaries/scenarios-in-the-world-energy-outlook-2025

**Tags:** scenarios, methodology

## Books

### 1. A Practitioner's Guide to Trade and Commodity Finance

**Author:** Geoffrey Wynne

A practitioner reference on trade and commodity finance law and structures, with specialist chapters on documentary credits, standby guarantees, warehouse financing, ECA cover, receivables and supply chain finance. The second edition adds the Greensill collapse and fintech applications.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0414081013?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** trade-finance, commodity-finance, documentary-credits, receivables-finance, supply-chain-finance

### 2. Oil 101

**Author:** Morgan Downey

A reference covering the full chain from reservoir geology and drilling through refining chemistry, product specifications, transport and the mechanics of benchmark pricing, giving readers the physical vocabulary behind terms traders and analysts use daily.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://oil101.morgandowney.com/

**Tags:** oil markets, refining, geology, pricing

### 3. Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air

**Author:** David MacKay

Puts energy consumption and every supply option into one common unit, kilowatt-hours per person per day, then adds up whether renewables can cover demand. Teaches you to reason about energy claims numerically rather than rhetorically.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0954452933?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, science-research, climate-action

### 4. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

**Author:** Daniel Yergin

A narrative history of the petroleum industry from the first Pennsylvania wells through the Gulf War, covering Standard Oil, the concession era, OPEC and the supply shocks, so cartel and chokepoint headlines read as recurring patterns.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** $25.99

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439110123?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** oil history, geopolitics, OPEC

### 5. Virtual Barrels: Quantitative Trading in the Oil Market

**Author:** Ilia Bouchouev

Quantitative models for oil derivatives, treating the futures curve as an equilibrium between hedging pressure and speculative risk capital rather than a forecast. Covers spreads, options, volatility and systematic strategies, with the mathematics worked out.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/3031361539?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** futures curve, hedging, derivatives, quantitative

### 6. The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources

**Author:** Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

Two Bloomberg journalists trace how commodity trading houses like Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura moved oil, metals and grain through embargoes, coups and collapses. Explains why physical traders, not producers, often set the terms of resource markets.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0197651534?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** commodity trading, trading houses

### 7. The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

**Author:** Daniel Ammann

A biography of Marc Rich, built on interviews with him, tracing the invention of the spot crude market, trading with embargoed regimes, the tax indictment and flight to Switzerland, and the firm that became Glencore.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/031265068X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** commodity trading, Glencore, Marc Rich

### 8. Energy Trading & Investing: Trading, Risk Management, and Structuring Deals in the Energy Markets

**Author:** Davis W. Edwards

Crude, products, gas, LNG, power and emissions with structuring and risk management on top. Worth it only if you need the sectors Oil 101 stops short of.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1259835383?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** energy trading, power, gas, LNG, risk management

### 9. Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices

**Author:** Robert McNally

A history arguing that wild price swings are oil's default condition, and that the stable decades were produced by deliberate control, first by the Texas Railroad Commission and later by OPEC. Written by a former White House energy adviser.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231178158?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** oil history, OPEC, price cycles

### 10. Black Gold and Blackmail: Oil and Great Power Politics

**Author:** Rosemary A. Kelanic

A study of the anticipatory strategies great powers adopt when they fear their oil supply could be severed: stockpiling, self-sufficiency drives, and seizing territory, and why leaders consistently overestimate the threat and over-insure against it.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501748297?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** geopolitics, chokepoints, energy security

### 11. Petroleum Refining: Technology, Economics, and Markets

**Author:** Mark J. Kaiser, Arno de Klerk, James H. Gary, Glenn E. Handwerk

Reference text on petroleum refining that pairs process technology with refinery economics: crude properties, product yields, unit operations, margins, product pricing and complexity metrics. Readers learn how refinery configuration drives run decisions, crack spreads and profitability.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1466563001?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** petroleum-refining, crack-spreads, refinery-economics, refinery-processes, oil-products

### 12. LNG: Fuel for a Changing World — A Nontechnical Guide

**Author:** Michael D. Tusiani, Gordon Shearer

A nontechnical account of the LNG chain from gas field through liquefaction, shipping and regasification, then the commercial layer: long-term sale and purchase agreements, destination clauses, oil-indexed pricing formulas and the shift toward hub-linked terms.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593703694?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** LNG, liquefaction, gas contracts

### 13. Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf

**Author:** Jim Krane

Krane examines how the Gulf monarchies used cheap domestic fuel and electricity as part of the ruling bargain, why consumption then grew fast enough to threaten export revenue, and how governments began rolling subsidies back.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231179308?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** Gulf states, subsidies, Vision 2030

## Courses

### 1. EBF 301: Global Finance for the Earth, Energy, and Materials Industries

**Author:** Farid Tayari, Tom Seng, Zhongyang He

Twelve lessons on contract specs, cash-market pricing methodology, the price reporting agencies, logistics, hedging, swaps and spreads. The only free source that teaches PRA methodology properly.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://courses.ems.psu.edu/ebf301

**Tags:** price reporting agencies, hedging, cash markets, NYMEX

### 2. Oil & Gas Industry Operations and Markets

**Author:** Duke University

A Duke University survey of the upstream, midstream and downstream segments, how oil and gas are priced and traded, and the policy and environmental constraints on the sector. Roughly three hours of video without assignments.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/oilandgas/

**Tags:** oil and gas fundamentals

### 3. Introduction to Crude Oil

**Author:** CME Group Institute

Roughly 75 minutes of short lessons on the crude oil futures market, covering contract specifications and a worked example of placing a hedge. After it you can read a futures quote and follow how producers manage price risk.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.cmegroup.com/education/courses/introduction-to-crude-oil

**Tags:** futures, contract specifications, hedging

### 4. FSC 432: Petroleum Refining

**Author:** Semih Eser

Penn State online course in twelve lessons covering crude oil assay, distillation and separation, thermal and catalytic conversion processes, product finishing, refinery economics and natural gas processing. Learners understand how a refinery turns crude into fuels and how units fit together.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://courses.ems.psu.edu/fsc432

**Tags:** petroleum-refining, crude-assay, catalytic-conversion, gas-processing, chemical-processes

## Papers

### 1. The New Forward Brent Benchmark

**Author:** Adi Imsirovic, Kurt Chapman

How Dated Brent is actually assessed, and why WTI Midland was admitted to the basket. If you quote Brent, you should know the benchmark is now partly American.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/the-new-forward-brent-benchmark/

**Tags:** Brent, benchmarks, WTI Midland

### 2. Inside the commodity markets in 2020-23 — what happened and how they work

**Author:** Javier Blas

A paper prepared for the ECB's Sintra forum explaining how commodity traders finance themselves with short-term bank credit, and why the margin calls of 2022 turned a liquidity problem into a question about the solvency of major houses.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/ecbforum/shared/pdf/2023/Blas_paper.pdf

**Tags:** trader funding, margin, 2022 crisis

### 3. The Economics of Commodity Trading Firms

**Author:** Craig Pirrong

An economic analysis of why commodity trading firms exist, framing them as transformers of goods in space, time and form, and examining their risk management, capital structure, and where systemic risk does and does not sit.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.bauer.uh.edu/spirrong/economics-commodity-trading-firms.pdf

**Tags:** commodity trading, economic value

### 4. Historical Oil Shocks

**Author:** James D. Hamilton

Hamilton's survey of oil market disruptions from 1862 through 2008, pairing each episode with the volume of production lost, the price move that followed, and the evidence on whether it contributed to a US recession.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.nber.org/papers/w16790

**Tags:** oil shocks, recessions, macroeconomics

### 5. Interim Staff Report: Trading in NYMEX WTI Crude Oil Futures around April 20, 2020

**Author:** U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

The regulator's forensic reconstruction of the day WTI futures settled at minus $37.63, covering order flow, storage constraints at Cushing, and how expiry mechanics in a physically settled contract produced a negative price.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.cftc.gov/media/5296/InterimStaffReportNYMEX_WTICrudeOil/download

**Tags:** negative prices, WTI, physical delivery

### 6. Understanding the Plunge in Oil Prices: Sources and Implications

**Author:** World Bank

A World Bank chapter separating the supply and demand causes of the 2014 price collapse, quantifying each, and setting out the consequences for oil exporters, importers and OPEC's decision not to cut output.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/GEP/GEP2015a/pdfs/GEP2015a_chapter4_report_oil.pdf

**Tags:** 2014 oil crash, OPEC market share

### 7. World LNG Report 2026

**Author:** International Gas Union

The International Gas Union's annual statistical review of the LNG trade, reporting volumes shipped by exporter and importer, liquefaction and regasification capacity, final investment decisions, the carrier fleet, and floating LNG projects.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.igu.org/igu-reports/2026-world-lng-report

**Tags:** LNG, liquefaction capacity, regasification

### 8. World Energy Outlook 2025

**Author:** International Energy Agency

The IEA's flagship annual projection of energy supply and demand to 2050, presenting scenarios such as Stated Policies and Net Zero, with the underlying assumptions on investment, fuel prices and emissions that other forecasters benchmark against.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2025

**Tags:** scenarios, STEPS, demand forecasting

### 9. World Oil Outlook 2026

**Author:** OPEC Secretariat

The producers' long-term view: no peak in sight. A house view from an interested party, which is why the gap between it and STEPS is worth studying.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://publications.opec.org/woo

**Tags:** demand forecasting, OPEC

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