Foreign Reports - Oil Crises

Oil Crises

In the year of its founding, Foreign Reports benefited from one of the first “oil crises” that have afflicted the Middle East over the years—the 1956 Suez Crisis, with its concomitant closure of the Suez Canal, which was a great boon to notable tanker owners of the time, who were avid clients of Foreign Reports.

Since that time, Foreign Reports has closely covered for its subscribers all the major and minor crises that have bedeviled world oil markets ever since, as well as the broad geopolitical trends that have affected markets and business conditions. The methods it uses to anticipate the unanticipated are relatively straightforward and avoid being unduly alarmist. They are methods that have been refined over time.

Most every crisis begins with a series of rumbles, and the rumbles have to be distinguished from mere bluster and bombast. Knowing who the players are, how they think, what they confide in others, their history of risk-taking and their own domestic political requirements is essential. As any potential crisis builds, often over a period of months, Foreign Reports writes up a contemporaneous narrative, covering the story as it develops, often focusing on key details, which, only later, historians pick up on and piece together.