Roaring trades: oil majors' secret success story

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• 00:03

  The Economist.

• 00:10

  Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.

• 00:12

  I'm Jason Palmer.

• 00:19

  Today on the show, America's capricious grip on frontier AI models

• 00:23

  and the changing business of concert tours.

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  First up, though,

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  The world's largest energy firms, collectively known as the majors,

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  have done really well through this oil shock.

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  And one reason is that they've drilled oil and they've refined it,

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  and they sold it at a higher price, which is not surprising to most people.

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  But another reason is far less known,

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  which is that they've done a lot of trading.

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  Matthieu Favas is our commodities editor.

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  And the year-long conflict has really shown the extent to which this activity, trading,

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  has become central to these businesses.

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  Let's start with what you mean when you say trading.

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  So trading can be defined in opposition to marketing.

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  So marketing is selling what you produce, distributing it to the global market.

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  Trading is buying someone else's produce and selling it to whoever wants it most

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  at the highest price possible, at a profit.

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