Timing of Oil Shock Hits Exactly as Predicted in Article of Last Year

A major spike in price volatility surged through the oil markets last week.

In my article of last October posted at EnergyCentral.COM https://lnkd.in/dzX2NDzw. I wrote:

""In the short term, I am concerned that the coming wave of volatility will correspond to a sharp ramp-up and crash in oil price – perhaps similar to that which occurred in 2008. A tight sequence of such ramps and crashes may also give rise to spikes in price variance that mark one of these recurring bouts of instability. If such a period of intense volatility does occur it may be a moment of reckoning for the oil industry... and for us all.”

It looks as if the first of these scenarios may be starting to play out i.e., “...a sharp ramp up and crash in oil price…”. albeit, that this latest spike in price variance is occurring for reasons I could not have possibly anticipated last October. Obviously, the proximal cause is the war in Ukraine. 

This being said, my view is that Mr Putin may be well aware of the long-term pattern of cycling instability in the energy markets that I have been describing now for more than a decade. Furthermore, I’d speculate that he grasps that this moment in the cycle (i.e. the period between the winters of 2021 and 2022) is a phase of elevated vulnerability for the West, and whether by hook or by crook, he has timed his actions to take advantage of our susceptibility. It is not clear to me whether this is a matter of intuition or whether he has advisors around him who encountered the idea and then became persuaded of its veracity. If it is the latter, it would have been a trivial matter for an adept to check my numbers. I have described my methods in detail in my articles (e.g. see footnote in https://lnkd.in/dzX2NDzw) and Russia has many fine mathematicians.

We are all inspired by the brave Ukrainians and their courageous leader Mr Zelensky. In this thrall, I believe that we are in grave danger of underestimating Mr Putin's imperial ambitions. He appears to be an unusually gifted strategic thinker and actor - historically, aspirational parallels to tyrants like Napoleon and Hitler come to mind. For all those who value democracy and individual freedom - I fear we may have the fight of our lifetime on our hands.