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Uncovering the Secret History of Wall Street’s Largest Oil Trade

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Uncovering the Secret History of Wall Street’s Largest Oil Trade

Bloomberg Business,

5 min read
5 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Mexico did what other oil-producing countries don’t – and made a lot of money along the way.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Overview
  • Background

Recommendation

If you have never heard of Mexico’s large, annual oil bets, it’s for good reason: Since the early 1990s, the Mexican government has gone out of its way to keep its Wall Street activities under wraps. Javier Blas, chief energy reporter at Bloomberg News, has gone through thousands of pages of government audit reports and other documents in the United States and Mexico, as well as interviewed government officials, traders and bankers, to tell the story of how Mexico has been protecting itself from oil price fluctuations for all these years. getAbstract recommends this piece of first-rate investigative reporting to energy traders, policy makers and Wall Street insiders. 

Summary

The Mexican government, together with the state-owned energy company Petroleos Mexicanos, has been engaged in hardly-publicized oil hedges with prominent Wall Street banks since the 1990s. Although the deals involve large sums of money and high fees paid to banks, most energy industry experts and Wall Street insiders don’t know that these oil price hedges exist. In July 2008, when oil prices reached an all-time high of $147.27 a barrel, a group of Mexican government officials concluded that the prices – which emerging economies like China and Brazil fueled with demand – were unsustainable. Consequently...

About the Author

Javier Blas is chief energy correspondent for Bloomberg News in London.

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