When something significant is happening, a certain silence falls over an oil trading desk. There is a sort of held breath, as if everyone is waiting for the next tick to confirm what they already suspect, but it’s not exactly silence—the phones are still ringing and the chat windows are still blinking. On a Wednesday afternoon, if you walk past one of these desks in Rotterdam or London, you’ll typically see at least one screen tuned to the same location: the Oil Market Journal, whose prices are updated every fifteen minutes and whose change column flashes red or green based on the direction of the Gulf wind.
The Oil Market Journal, or OMJ to its regular users, was established in 1999 in Enniskillen, a Northern Ireland market town that most oil traders couldn’t find on a map. People are still amused by that detail. A small team of about ten workers has been providing clients in more than 25 countries with real-time Rotterdam spot prices, ICE futures data, and sophisticated product evaluations from an industrial estate in County Fermanagh for more than 20 years. The Killyhevlin headquarters is located close to Lake Geneva, next to satellite offices in London and Nyon. For a business whose pulse beats in time with crude, the geography is peculiar.
The pulse has been erratic this week. On Wednesday afternoon, Brent crude was down $2.01 during the session, trading at $109.27. WTI was at $102.35. Futures on gasoline fell more than 8 cents. A significant decline in stocks had just been reported by the API. The headlines that appeared on OMJ’s news ticker, such as “UKRAINE ATTACKS MORE RUSSIAN REFINERIES,” “UK ALLOWS IMPORT OF REFINED PRODUCTS FROM RUSSIAN CRUDE,” and “OIL LOWER AS TRUMP DELAYS ATTACK ON IRAN,” read more like a logbook from a season that no one really anticipated. The Hormuz Strait is still closed. Tankers are piling up. Additionally, traders are refreshing the page as they always do when things go wrong.
The degree to which small, reliable data providers are essential to the daily rhythm of physical oil trading is easily overlooked. Citations go to the big names, such as Platts, S&P Global, and wire services. However, you’ll frequently hear OMJ mentioned in the same sentence when you ask a forecourt manager pricing diesel for a fleet of trucks or a bunker trader in Antwerp. They’ll say it’s reliable. When you need them, the numbers are available. The desktop program loads. The Excel plugin is functional. Until you’ve witnessed a rival system freeze during a price spike, that may sound like mild praise.
The peculiar atmosphere was aptly captured in the company’s recent commentary, which was released on Monday. According to the report, kero and diesel prices in Europe were consolidating, with stocks remaining stable in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub because of arrivals from the US, Nigeria, and the Saudi Red Sea port at Yanbu. The stock releases that had been announced earlier in the crisis were beginning to come in. Consolidation in the near future. However, the longer the Strait stays closed, the more likely it is that prices will rise later in Q3. This was the line that persisted. Investors appear to think that the worst is being handled. Whether they are correct is still up for debate.
From a distance, it seems like the oil market has entered a phase where everyone is aware that the dam is leaking but no one wants to be the first to flee. Russia and Iran. attacks on refineries. Extended sanctions waivers were followed by conflicting signals. At this week’s Astana briefing, a trader half-jokingly described it as attempting to price an asset whose risk premium shifts each time a politician speaks.
For its part, OMJ continues to operate as it has since 1999. current prices. data on settlements. the weekly report on fundamentals. Ruth Fannin and Sam Galloway are said to be enjoying their conversations at a stand at the UNITI Expo in Germany. Nothing about it is ostentatious. However, in a market like this, being unassuming and nervous begins to seem indispensable.
