Lecture
Pipelines, Prices, and Power: Market Governance in the Era of Oil Price Benchmarks
- Jack Seddon
- Date
- Tuesday 27 August 2024
- Time
- Series
- Diplomacy and Global Affairs Research Seminar Series 2024
- Location
-
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP The Hague - Room
- 4.78
Registration
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About the event
As markets began to apprehend the coming of Covid-19, investors panicked, and WTI crude oil contract fell more than 300%, settling at negative $37.63 a barrel. How could a barrel of oil be worth less than nothing? Was the WTI oil price benchmark fit for purpose? In his talk, Jeck Seddon will put the events of April 2020 into the context of the historical evolution of the global oil pricing system. He will present an in-depth inquiry into the development of crude oil market benchmark pricing and pricing conventions around the world. The talk will explore the actors and processes that have been crucial to producing the demand for crude oil price benchmark creation and change, and how and to what extent market services providers—including futures exchanges, price-reporting agencies (PRAs), such as Platts and Argus, and other stakeholders in the price formation process—have responded.
About the speaker
Jack Seddon is an associate professor at Waseda University in Japan. He joined Waseda in 2019 and works at the intersection of international political economy and economic history, employing theories of institutionalism and mixed research methods. Jack received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and has held visiting positions at the University of Pennsylvania, the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the European University Institute, and Georgetown University. He is part of the Sterling Area Revisited Project, funded by the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). In 2019-2020, he was awarded a Lloyd’s of London UK-US Fulbright Scholarship to examine issues in global risk markets. Before beginning his graduate studies, he worked as a capital markets lawyer in London and Brussels.
About the seminars
The Diplomacy and Global Affairs (DGA) Research Seminar is a series launched by the Research Group on Diplomacy and Global Affairs at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. The seminars of internationally acknowledged guest researchers and faculty members deal with current research topics in diplomacy, international relations, global affairs, and political economy broadly conceived and target a broad audience through their interdisciplinary focus.
If you have any questions, please contact Arash Pourebrahimi.