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Fuel Buyers Summit: Where are oil markets headed after pandemic disruptions?

The macroeconomic view of today’s global oil market

This fireside chat recap is from the FreightWaves Fuel Buyers Summit. 

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Global price volatility: One expert’s analysis

DETAILS: The price of oil is higher, but there’s no rush to produce more oil, at least not in the U.S. Why isn’t the oil industry reacting the way it usually does?

SPEAKER: Stephen Jones, senior vice president-oil market strategies, Argus Media


BIO: Stephen Jones is senior vice president of oil markets strategies at Argus and is based in Houston. He leads engagements with industry stakeholders on strategic matters related to market fundamentals, regulatory developments and price factors across the petroleum sectors. Jones joined Argus in 2017 as manager of the Americas Oil Markets Business Development team and became the global head of oil products in 2018, where he was responsible for Argus pricing solutions for the rapidly changing trading requirements for gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, marine fuels, base oils, asphalt, refinery feedstocks and biofuels markets. Jones has expertise in all aspects of the energy business, having served clients for 34 years in the industry. Prior to Argus, he was with Purvin & Gertz and IHS Markit for 17 years, where he was vice president of the refining and marketing team. 

KEY QUOTES FROM JONES: 

“The reason why we haven’t seen investment going back into the oil patch in the U.S. is that production was growing rapidly and all the earnings that the production was generating was being turned back into drilling more, increasing growth, as opposed to returning cash to investors.”

“Since so many investors got burned from that price drop, the requirements now that so many investors have for that sector is merely to return the cash to the shareholders, as opposed to investing in more drilling.”


“Our view is that OPEC has spare capacity that will meet the increased market demand in the next year, and prices are likely to soften.”

More articles by John Kingston

John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.