On 29 July, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it has purchased 4.65 million barrels of crude oil to be delivered to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) between October and December 2024. With this latest round, DOE has purchased 43.25 million barrels to replenish the SPR after emergency releases in 2022 to lower the cost of oil and gasoline. In its announcement, DOE stated that the full amount of 180 million barrels sold “following the unprecedented Russian war against Ukraine” have been “secured.” However, 140 million barrels come from long planned releases through 2027 that were cancelled in late 2022, thus there is not likely to be any market reaction to this announcement. Here's the back...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.