Dated Brent Minutia with Kurt Chapman S5 | Ep 40

World of Oil Derivatives

Industry Legend and Director of Levmet, Kurt Chapman, joins Onyx CEO Greg Newman to discuss the evolution of the Dated Brent market.

Kurt discusses his plethora of experience in the physical and financial markets. He graduated from Harvard University with a BA in Economics and went on to serve as an Infantry Officer in the US Marine Corps. He explains how his time in the Marines prepared him for life as a Commodity Trader.

His wide-spanning trading career started on Wall Street in the '80s, where trading commodities was relatively new, and by 2006 Kurt joined Mercuria Energy Trading in Geneva as an Equity Partner and Global Head of Crude. In his 30 years in the industry, he’s seen significant change in how Crude is traded. From volatility in the early 2000s and the commodities super cycle, to the economic crash in 2009, to OPEC bringing discipline back into the market, Kurt discusses the evolution of the market from making trades via phone calls and pagers to the migration to the electronic exchange and how that affected Traders' lines of work.

Kurt and Greg discuss how the Brent Benchmark has evolved over the years and now includes US crude. Its ability to evolve is what keeps the Brent benchmark the number one benchmark in oil. They also discuss the future of Crude Oil Trading and where the market is heading.