Oil Supply & Trading: The International Industry Value Chain (CLASSROOM) - OSTC
Course Schedule
Date |
Time |
Location |
Price* |
Registration Deadline** |
*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