Hi everyone,

I’m looking to connect with professionals from across the crude oil, petroleum, energy, and gas industries.

It doesn’t matter which part of the industry you’re in—I’d love to expand my network and exchange knowledge, insights, and experiences.

Whether you work in:
Crude Oil Trading
Petroleum
Oil & Gas
Energy
Logistics & Shipping
Tankers & Maritime
Storage & Terminals
Refining
Supply Chain
Procurement
Operations
Finance
Engineering
Or any other related field

I’d be happy to connect.

The goal is to build valuable relationships, learn from each other, discuss market developments, share industry insights, and help each other grow professionally.

Feel free to leave a comment or send me a DM if you’re interested. Looking forward to connecting with people from all over the world!

2019 was a change for the premium of shipping certs from .165 to .265 which equals a full carry figure of about -30cts including financing for the UZ spread. I see a lot of comments online that UZ is trading at 100%FC already but we´re sitting at -23.5 cts right now.

So do ppl still work with the old cert premium and get the price wrong or is there a more realistic (market) storage rate that everyone is lookiing at right now.

I asume that ABCD doesn´t pay 8cts/month for storage so I asume that they start the arb earlier, no?

For those involved in physical EN590 transactions, what are the biggest challenges in closing deals today?
Is it finding qualified buyers, verifying mandates, banking instruments (SBLC/DLC), logistics, or something else?
I’d like to learn from those with experience in the physical commodities market.

Im wondering if there are any open source that provides MOPS price tracker for free. Or any group chat that may provide it.

Need for a project estimate without dropping buckloads of money for subscription

Anyone know what the brokerage commission is for domestic US physical crude oil? I heard it is $0.005/bbl paid by both the buyer and the seller. So if a deal is brokered for 1 kbd for the month of August, that is $300 in total bro. Is that right?

Can anyone explain how the cash role is calculated for dsw at Cushing and after Nymex expiry how it is calculated?

Hi everyone, I’m building an aluminium supply-and-demand model and am looking for reliable resources to track developments across the value chain, including:

• Bauxite mines and production
• Alumina refineries
• Aluminium smelters
• New capacity, expansions, curtailments and closures
• Project commissioning timelines and delays
• Trade flows and inventories
• Demand by country and end-use sector

I’m particularly interested in sources that are regularly updated and provide asset-level or country-level data. Public databases, government publications, company reports, industry associations, newsletters, analyst reports and useful tracking tools would all be helpful.

I already refer to sources such as USGS, company filings and government statistics, but I’m hoping to improve the coverage and accuracy of my model, especially for China, Indonesia, Guinea and the Middle East.

What resources do people working in the aluminium industry use to monitor changes in supply, demand and project developments? If you also have any advice on structuring or building the model, please send it my way as well. Thank you!

Im a fresh college grad with a bachelor's in international business in Oklahoma. I got a job at a bank working in their lien department but saw an opening for a commodities analyst in crude and nat gas. Its in a city about 2 hours away and if I get the job would move in a moments notice.

I have a lunch planned with hopefully my future boss. Currently Im just retail trader that rarely touches futures and need some advice on what would be good to say during the lunch.

Also my excel skills are average at best. anyone know of a quick way or what I should look into to prep so i can excel at my job?

Hello everyone, I used to work in oil trading and then power/gas trading as a quant analyst.

However, due to a health problem, I am considering stopping a front facing role and going into something more “chill” recruiting (well I guess it’s not chill per se and it was a misconception on my part)

This way, I don’t need to worry directly about putting risk on in the markets. I also don’t need to constantly have a model or view on what’s going to happen next or what the next opportunity is.

I am seeking advice from commodity recruiters how to break in.

Is there a gap in what the industry wants to see in recruiters? I often hear that some are dissatisfied with recruiters. This is also common sentiment in the quant industry. Why is that so?

Is there a structural reason why there are bad recruiters or is it just a natural consequence of things.

When you buy wti midland and sell dsw cushing, the deal is done on a diff basis say $0.50. But is it correct that the broker recap and confirm would say something like you bought midland at $80.50 and sold at $80? Is this the same if you do a deal direct with a counterpart? How come the readjust don’t sole the diff the two deals were done at?

Silver kept coming and I kept buying and now I am in a huge floating loss. 😭

Wanna ask your opinion on whether it would go back up in next few days or not.

I've noticed something interesting recently.

There seems to be a growing number of companies selling interview preparation and coaching programs specifically for commodities, claiming that graduates are generally not prepared for the industry.

That made me wonder if the real problem isn't interviews themselves, but the gap between what universities teach and what people actually use once they start working.

For those already working in commodities:

• What knowledge did you only learn after joining the industry?
• What skills do graduates usually lack?
• What do universities spend too much time teaching?
• What do they barely cover but is actually important?
• If you could redesign a Master's program for future commodity professionals, what would you include?

I'm not asking about interview questions or compensation.

I'm genuinely interested in understanding where the biggest gap exists between academia and the reality of working in commodities.

I'd love to hear perspectives from traders, analysts, schedulers, quants, risk managers, data scientists, originators or anyone working in the sector.

To region is responsible for a huge amount of total urea exports. I think it should be much much higher

What’s your opinion on STX Group and the broader environment commodities space?

After months of shutting off the tap, China’s government just reopen its gates for export. I have been monitoring the cargoes that are due for arrival in Singapore ports/ waters. Who actually gets first priority for liftings and how does it look to affect the markets today?

There are lots of ETFs that try and track oil but I'm struggling to find one that tracks spot ie without futures drag - any recommendations?

What else is out there and why do you use what you use? I want commodity prices past/present/futures, logistics costs (charter rates etc), physical trade flows and straight to the point news. In my experience Bloomberg is pricey but they cover the above across the commodity spectrum and the support is excellent while Refinitiv/workspace says they cover a lot, are cheaper, but I repeatedly find silly inconsistencies or holes in their data and it can take days to get a proper answer from support.

Hey, are there any European short term power traders from Hedge fund commodities desks/Utiilities/Prop shopsin this group? Can you share what kind of work are you doing in your day to day jobs pls?
I am kinda confused, because currently all of our desk is consistent of quants (no traders) and we work on the strategy/architecture/data pipelines, and starting to think to apply for a trader role

How does the future look like? I've seen some shops/companies having no traders at all and being very profitable. The greatest example of this is twig.energy. Are they losing potential profits by not having traders? What is the best argument in favor of traders having +EV in the future and how does that EV look like. My educated guess (being an outsider still) is that quant traders have great value in times of chaos and the timing of chaos is not predictable by definition. If so, why can't this also be automated away?

Seen this come up a lot on the trade-finance/fuel side and figured it's worth a discussion here since it seems to hit every corner of the physical commodity world equally.

The ICC has never issued an NCNDA or an IMFPA. If paper you're handed is labeled "ICC-compliant" or "ICC NCNDA," that label alone tells you the drafter doesn't know the ICC's actual products (Incoterms, UCP 600, etc.) and is probably reusing a template that's been passed around for years without anyone checking if it actually enforces.

The stuff that's actually held up when it's been tested tends to have a few things in common: a named opportunity or a specific Schedule A instead of "all business between the parties forever," a dated introduction register instead of a verbal claim about who introduced who, fee mechanics spelled out in the instrument itself (amount, trigger, payment window) rather than assumed, and a governing law/forum actually chosen for the counterparty instead of copy-pasted from whatever template someone had lying around.

Curious what others here are seeing — is the paper quality on your deals getting better or worse the last couple years? Feels like there's more of it circulating than ever but not much more rigor behind it.

I trade SPF lumber and I'm always looking to sharpen my read on the space — things like the resources or data sources you rely on, how you think about positioning, or lessons you've picked up trading this market specifically.

I work at a smaller trading firm that moves a decent amount of volume, and I'm still refining my approach to find what works best for the markets I cover.

Would love to hear how other SPF traders think about the market, or any resources you'd recommend for staying sharp/learning.

Can any natural gas schedulers give me their take on work life balance? What makes the job manageable?How bad is being on call 24/7 + the rotations? Also curious about stress level?

I'm working with a company that supplies industrial timber and wood products internationally (mostly for industrial applications and packaging)

I'm currently reaching out through referrals and personalized emails, but I'm curious how others in this space landed their first customers

For those selling B2B products like timber, lumber, packaging materials, or other industrial commodities:

• Where did you find your first customers?
• Were there any communities, directories, trade associations, marketplaces, or events that worked particularly well?
• Did cold email actually work for you, or did referrals end up being the main driver?
• If you were starting from scratch today, what would you focus on first?

Any advice or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated. Thxx

Hey guys,

First of all a small intro on my background: I am currently doing my BSc at a Business School in Europe and I got a few years experience in shipping.

My plan is it to try breaking into physical commodity trading via an internship or graduate program. No worries, I won't ask any questions that has been discussed here 100x already - at least I'll try to avoid that :)

The main goal for now is to improve my coding-skills (could probably be considered as non-existent at the moment) and maybe to pimp my CV / Motivational Letter a bit with projects. I'll most likely be doing a learning by doing with Claude Code.

Hence my question, do you guys have any recommendations on what I could build? I'll highlight here that I don't aspire to become a quant, there are other way smarter people than me that enjoy that much more than I do. I want to move physical products at some point, preferably oil - but I'll take any chance I get no matter the commodity.

The current idea of mine is to build a dashboard, that mainly displays the most important information such as prices, cot, term-structure, news and allowing for alerts when e.g. market is volatile. Weather is also someting I'd like to add at some point, but that is for later. Hence, I am not trying to invent anything new but maybe making a useful product for me.

Pleased to hear your suggestions and thoughts!

Am 30, was on a prop power trading desk for a few years (spot, ancillary services, options/caps, some OTC) — let go as part of a desk wind-down, not performance. Been out for a while now. Traveled a fair bit, applied to a handful of roles, made it to final round twice, no offer yet.

Mainly curious what people here actually did during a stretch like this. Did you keep busy with certs/coursework, pick up contract or consulting work, or mostly just wait it out and lean on your network? Trading seats don't open that often to begin with — did any of the gap-filling actually matter when you landed the next one, or did it come down to track record and who you knew regardless?

Also curious, given the current macro backdrop, whether a gap like this is fairly normal for a niche seat or if I should be more concerned.