This thesis consists of three essays on risk management in crude oil markets. In the first essay, the valuation of an oil sands project is studied using real options approach. Oil sands production consumes substantial amount of natural gas during extracting and upgrading. Natural gas prices are known to be stochastic and highly volatile which introduces a risk factor that needs to be taken into account. The essay studies the impact of this risk factor on the value of an oil sands project and its optimal operation. The essay takes into account the co-movement between crude oil and natural gas markets and, accordingly, proposes two models: one incorporates a long-run link between the two markets while the other has no such link. The valuation problem is solved using the Least Square Monte Carlo (LSMC) method proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001) for valuing American options. The valuation results show that incorporating a long-run relationship between the two markets is a very crucial decision in the value of the project and in its optimal operation. The essay shows that ignoring this long-run relationship makes the optimal policy sensitive to the dynamics of natural gas prices. On the other hand, incorporating this long-run relationship makes the dynamics of natural gas price process have a very low impact on valuation and the optimal operating policy. In the second essay, the relationship between the slope of the futures term structure, or the forward curve, and volatility in the crude oil market is investigated using a measure of the slope based on principal component analysis (PCA). The essay begins by reviewing the main theories of the relation between spot and futures prices and considering the implication of each theory on the relation between the slope of the forward curve and volatility. The diagonal VECH model of Bollerslev et al. (1988) was used to analyse the relationship between of the forward curve slope and the variances of the spot and futures prices and the covariance between them. The results show that there is a significant quadratic relationship and that exploiting this relation improves the hedging performance using futures contracts. The third essay attempts to model the spot price process of crude oil using the notion of convenience yield in a regime switching framework. Unlike the existing studies, which assume the convenience yield to have either a constant value or to have a stochastic behaviour with mean reversion to one equilibrium level, the model of this essay extends the Brennan and Schwartz (1985) model to allows for regime switching in the convenience yield along with the other parameters. In the essay, a closed form solution for the futures price is derived. The parameters are estimated using an extension to the Kalman filter proposed by Kim (1994). The regime switching one-factor model of this study does a reasonable job and the transitional probabilities play an important role in shaping the futures term structure implied by the model.

This dissertation consists of two essays on crude oil futures and options markets. The first essay investigates whether aggregate risk aversion and risk premiums in the crude oil market co-vary with the level of speculation. Using crude oil futures and option data, I estimate aggregate risk aversion in the crude oil market and find that it is signi ficantly lower after 2002, when speculative activity started to increase. Using speculation index as a state variable, risk premiums implied by the state-dependent risk aversion estimates confi rm the negative correlation between speculative activity and risk premiums, and indicate that risk premiums in the crude oil market are on average lower and more volatile after 2002. These findings suggest that index-fund investors who demand commodity futures for the purpose of portfolio diversi fication are willing to accept lower compensation for their positions. Estimated state-dependent risk premiums have substantial predictive power for subsequent futures returns and outperform commonly used predictors. The second essay exams the economic importance of jumps, jump risk premiums, and dynamic jump intensities in crude oil futures and options markets. Existing pricing models for crude oil options are computationally intensive due to the presence of latent state variables. Using a panel data of crude oil futures and options, I implement a class of computationally e fficient discrete-time jump models. I find that jumps account for about half of the total variance in crude oil futures and options prices, and a substantial part of the risk premiums is due to jumps. Jumps are large and rare events in crude oil futures and options markets. The main role of jumps and jump risk premiums in crude oil futures and options markets is to capture excess kurtosis in the data. These findings suggest that it is critical to include jumps in pricing models for crude oil futures and options, and there is strong evidence in favor of time-varying jump intensities.

This book offers a simplified, clear, and logical explanation of risk and hedging in oil trading built up from basics. It provides techniques to identify and manage risk—legal risk, operational risk, financial risk, moral risk, etc.—in oil trading with the key chapters discussing price risk and hedging. Written by an industry expert with real-world experience and featuring examples based on real trades, the book allows readers to understand the principles and applications without being overwhelmed or misled by jargon and assumptions, and will be of interest to commodity traders, investment bankers, risk managers, and anyone looking to gain further knowledge about oil market risks and hedging.

"The future of energy is of enormous strategic importance, and the current energy market faces major uncertainties and risks. The goal of this study is to provide a risk assessment of the global oil market. Cordesman and Al-Rodhan study six major oil-producing regions of the world: the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, North America, and South and Central America. In each case, the authors outline national oil developments and focus on four major areas of risks and uncertainties: macroeconomic fluctuations, geopolitical risks, oil production uncertainties, and the nature of resources."--BOOK JACKET.

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 84,0 %, Dublin Business School, language: English, abstract: Companies that deal in future markets of commodities like the Crude Oil market are confronted with divers problems, which will be described and analysed in the following pages. There are many numerous factors that must be taken into consideration like the 'cost of carry', the basis risk, the importance of Contango and Backwardation and the costs and benefits associated with the utilization of options in general. In this concrete case an important client of our major consultancy firm has asked for an assessment of their current risk management policies, because they are primarily concerned with their exposure to rising energy cost including unexpected costs in managing their futures and forwards hedges in the Crude Oil market in the past two to three years. My task in the following paragraphs is to describe the problems and risks of futures, especially in the Crude Oil market, but also mention the chances implied with this market and the way to deal with it. At best, it will be possible for me to help our client to understand their past decisions and what was wrong with them, and to give them a recommendation for the future how they may improve their overall hedging strategy. Nevertheless, there does not exist any market that is safely predictable, thus there will not be a 100 percent safe prediction that guarantees profit, caused through for instance environmental disasters, political crises, or many more. This is another point I will show an interest in later by analysing the futures price, how it is developed, and the potential risks are included.

This book presents a risk management framework designed to achieve better decisions and more desirable outcomes. It presents an in-depth discussion of some fundamental principles of risk management related to the use of expected values, uncertainty handling, and risk acceptance criteria. Several examples from the offshore petroleum industry are included to illustrate the use of the framework, but it can also be applied in other areas.