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Course Level
Introduction
Delivery Method
Classroom Instructor-Led Course
Professional Development Credit Hours
32
Pre-requisites
There is no pre-requisite for this course.

Faculty

Mary Jackson has over twenty-five years' experience in the energy industry. After university she began her career at BP, working in the information management group, before joining the Manufacturing, Supply and Trading department. She subsequently worked at Saladin as a consultant, working closely with clients throughout the world and providing consultancy advice on energy market analysis, trading and risk management. In several senior roles at Saladin, she managed the energy consulting team, ran the energy market information service and directed strategy for new software and information product development.

Since 2000, Mary has worked as an independent energy market consultant and she formed Kingston Energy Consulting with Nigel Harris in 2002. Kingston Energy provides consultancy services to companies involved in energy markets and trading. A key area of work has been the European natural gas market - Kingston Energy has researched and authored a well-respected report on European natural gas trading which has been published annually since 2004.

Mary has lectured regularly for Mennta Energy Solutions on energy markets, trading and risk management and is also a regular speaker and panel member at public conferences. She has written articles for industry publications including Harts Energy Markets, Energy Risk, Global Energy Business and Petroleum Review.

Nigel Harris is a director and principal consultant at Kingston Energy Consulting, which he founded with Mary Jackson in 2002. He has been helping energy traders to analyse and understand the markets for over 25 years, initially as a developer of market analysis software systems, and more recently as a consultant. At Kingston Energy Consulting, his main focus is on providing education and information transfer to participants in the energy trading business, through instructor-led classroom training, web-based training development, research projects, workshops, briefings and research-based report writing. In his work with Mennta Energy Solutions, he has created a library of new instructor-led and web-based courses on European gas and power markets and trading. In 2005, he worked with Mary Jackson to develop the popular Oil Trading Orientation course, which has since been presented at venues all over the world. He has also extensively revised and updated many existing courses on derivatives, hedging and risk management.   He regularly presents this material both at public venues and as in-house, often customised, courses. He is co-author of a series of highly regarded reports on European natural gas trading and has also contributed to reports on power markets and oil trading. In previous roles, he was a key member of the team that initially designed and developed Saladin 's innovative Petroleum Analysis Workstation, a system that became an industry standard for historical price analysis during the 1990s and remained in use in the industry for two decades. During this period, he worked closely and extensively with oil and gas traders around the world to understand their information and analytical requirements. He also spent some years as an independent consultant, working mainly with software and information providers to help them better understand the oil and gas trading sectors.

Accreditations

NASBA: Mennta Energy Solutions is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its web site: www.nasbaregistry.org


CPD Certification Services: The CPD Certification Service works with Mennta Energy Solutions to ensure valuable knowledge is structured to complement the universal guidelines of Continuing Professional Development. Mennta Energy Solutions courses are approved by CPD at one credit per training hour.


Oil Supply & Trading: The International Industry Value Chain (CLASSROOM) - OST1

Course Schedule

Date Time Location Price* Registration Deadline**
17-20 Mar 2025
Register 		9:00-17:00
 London, UK
 GBP 3,995 (OST1-ALDN25-03)
 7 Feb 2025

*Prices do not include VAT, GST, or any other local taxes. All applicable taxes will be added to the invoice.
**Please register by the deadline to help us ensure sufficient attendance and avoid postponing the course.

Course Summary

This flagship four-day classroom course spans the oil supply chain, including the production and valuation of crude oils, transportation, and the manufacturing and blending of refined products, as well as an overview of the physical and paper trading markets for oil.

The course will begin with foundational knowledge that will set the stage for the more in-depth discussions. From there delegates will learn about the valuation of crude oil, marine transportation, pipelines, storage, and terminals.

Next, we’ll start a journey through the refinery by looking at processes, blending, and economics. This topic will culminate with the key characteristics and markets of the most popular refined products - LPGs, gasoline, naphtha, jet/kerosene, gasoil/diesel, fuel oil, and cracker feedstocks.

The course concludes with a detailed look at oil trading fundamentals. Delegates will gain insight into how trading contracts are structured and then the essential trading strategies – arbitrage, blending, storage, spread, and more. Finally, a look at the paper markets and hedging with the most common financial derivatives instruments will include futures, options, forwards, and swaps.

During the course, delegates will have an opportunity to apply lecture topics to real-world situations through several competitive team exercises.

Who Should Attend?

The course is ideal for new or recent entrants to the oil industry. It also caters to seasoned professionals that are moving into midstream or downstream functions.

In addition, any professional within an oil company or industry service company that interfaces with supply, refining, trading, and transportation functions would benefit from this training - such as legal, finance, insurance, and IT.

Course Content

Introduction to oil value chain

  • Upstream, midstream, downstream
  • Where value is created
  • Conventional & unconventional production
  • Key refined products & their uses
  • How oil is moved from field to refinery to end users

Crude oil

  • Key quality considerations: properties, key specs
  • Fundamentals: reserves, production, trade flows, stocks, geopolitics
  • How is crude oil valued, including netback analysis
  • Quality trends

Marine transportation

  • Types of tankers/barges, physical characteristics
  • Charter agreements: negotiating contracts, types of contracts, key terms
  • Calculating freight rates
  • Process for loading & unloading a tanker
  • What can go wrong: quality, quantity, demurrage

Pipeline transportation

  • Crude oil pipelines
  • Refined product pipelines
  • Pipeline scheduling & reconciliation
  • Pipeline tariffs
  • Major global oil pipelines

Other forms of transport

  • Rail – types of railcars, tariffs
  • Road – types/sizes of tankers

Storage & terminals

  • Types of oil storage: underground, floating storage, fixed roof, floating roof
  • Storage contract terms & tariffs
  • Storage considerations
  • Purpose of terminals
  • Uses of storage

Oil refining

  • Separation processes: CDU, VDU, solvent deasphalting, gas plants
  • Conversion processes: cat cracking, hydrocracking, catalytic reforming, alkylation, isomerization, visbreaking, coking
  • Treatment units: hydrotreating, solvent recovery of aromatics, merox
  • Specialized processes: lubricants, asphalt/bitumen, petrochemicals
  • Blending
    • In-line & batch blending
    • Blending considerations & calculations
  • Refinery economics & fundamentals
    • Refinery planning
    • Fixed & variable costs
    • Average & marginal barrel analysis
    • Types of refineries
    • Flexibility
    • Refinery capacities & complexities, expansions
  • Refining trends – challenges

Refined products

  • Fundamentals: consumption, trade flows
  • Key characteristics of major refined product markets – LPGs, gasoline, naphtha, jet/kerosene, gasoil/diesel, fuel oil, cracker feedstocks
    • Quality considerations/blending, blendstocks
    • Main grades
    • End user markets
  • Use of biofuels

Introduction to trading

  • Trading objectives & participants
  • What is traded?
  • Trading locations
  • Trading instruments & markets: physical, paper; spot/term
  • Trading units & conversions

Trading contracts

  • Pricing
    • Fixed, floating, OSPs, posted
    • Crude oil & product benchmarks
    • Price reporting
  • Quality 
  • Quantity
  • Delivery
  • Incoterms
  • Credit terms, including letters of credit
  • Key documents: BL, LOI

Trading strategies

  • Supply trading
  • Locational arbitrage
  • Blending
  • Storage plays & forward curves
  • Spread trading
  • Trading for profit
  • Price drivers & valuation

Paper markets

  • Exchange vs OTC
  • Futures
  • Forwards
  • Swaps
  • Options
  • Risk management and hedging
    • Exposure – long, short
    • Measuring risk
    • What is hedging
    • How do futures, swaps & options hedges work?
    • Advantages/disadvantages

 

During the course delegates will participate in team exercises covering many commercial aspects of supply, trading and transportation covering topics including:

  • Freight rates
  • Incoterms
  • Crude oil and refined products quality
  • Refinery economics
  • Price movements and trading
  • Price exposure and risk management

 

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