Spikes and Shocks

This book proposes that price volatility and speculation in the oil market originate from a decades-long process of financialisation. The author challenges mainstream critical accounts of the market that typically invoke the notion of a global oil shortage and so-called 'peak oil' arguments. Instead, he argues that the development of the market has been punctuated by recurring oil price shocks. Chapters examine the evolution of the international oil market and investigate how, and to what effect, the process of financialisation has transformed the structure and dynamics of the global oil market from 1980 to the present day. In doing so, the book suggests that the process of financialisation is both the cause and the proof of a profound change in the structure of the global oil market, that has turned the triangle of producers, consumers, and mediators that characterised the oil market until the 1980s into a four-tier structure through the addition of financial actors.

Chapter 1) Introduction. - Chapter 2) The History of the Oil Market until the 1980s. - Part 1) Conceptualising Financialisation. - Chapter 3) the Many Faces of Financialisation. - Chapter 4) Finance and the Oil Market: Introducing a Comprehensive Approach to analysing the Financialisation Process. - Part 2) The Three Phases of Oil Financialisation. - Chapter 5) Oil Products and Oil-Based Financial Products. - Chapter 6) Oil Shocks as Barometers of the Financialisation Process. - Chapter 7) The Three Phases of Oil Financialisation : Early Financialisation (1980-1999). - Chapter 8) The Three Phases of Oil Financialisation: Low Financialisation (1999-2002). - Chapter 9) The Three Phases of Financialisation: Advanced Financialisation (2002-2015). - Part 3: Financialisation of Oil Market and Evolution of Oil Market s Actor Structure. - Chapter 10) Financialisation of the Oil Market: The Four Actor Structure. - Chapter 11) Epilogue.