Book review: Untangling the knotty history of oil’s trading evolution

A former trader proves an illuminating guide to the messy and ad hoc way that multi-billion dollar crude markets have been born and developed

Adi Imsirovic has, in his new work Trading and Price Discovery for Crude Oils, written very much a book of two parts. The first eight chapters race us on a tour through the economic history of the oil market over the last 170 or so years; the second part gets down to the brass tacks of the complex markets spawned by producing country nationalisations on the one hand and the gaming of the UK fiscal regime for petroleum on the other. There can be few commentators with as appropriate a CV to write on this topic as the author. A professional energy economist, an educator and, for many years, a successful trader in oil markets, his detailed knowledge stands out in this analysis. Something o