Oil Market Reporter, Residual Fuels

The Role: The Oil Market Reporter (Grade 9) is a market reporter who takes responsibility for day-to-day news reporting and price assessments covering oil markets in Europe and Africa. More experienced reporters will also be considered, with a potential for a commensurate grade (10) available. This position sits within the Residual Fuels team, which covers key benchmarks in the busy shipping fuels market, currently grappling with the challenges and opportunities of the energy transition, and refinery feedstocks.

The Impact: The Reporter in this position is responsible for every aspect of market reporting, including the collection and publication of primary market information, running a price assessment process, reporting market-related news, writing commentary and analysis, contributing to methodology development and engaging with market sources from across the trading community.

The Career Opportunity: Excellent career growth potential within the team.

The Business: At S&P Global Commodity Insights, the premier source of commodities intelligence, the content you generate and the relationships you build are essential to the energy, petrochemicals, metals and agricultural markets.

Your Skills: Strong numerical skills; Strong writing skills; Strong interpersonal & communication skills; Ability to perform well with tight deadlines. Experience of relevant reporting or analytical experience desirable.

Accountabilities

Assess markets:

The market reporter in this position assesses the value of oil markets, accurately and fully in line with our rigorous and well-known methodology. The market reporter will survey market participants throughout the day; publish price updates through the day, especially all information that might be used in assessing value; run an intensive one-hour or so window period from at the end of the assessment day; demonstrate a thorough understanding of Platts' methodology; be rigorous when using mathematics and excel spreadsheets; demonstrate ability to do a full set of assessments without the aid of a spreadsheet; and ensure our methodology for market is up to date.

Write High-quality Market Commentaries

The market reporter is responsible for writing daily commentaries associated with their assessments. The commentaries are intended to help our readers better understand what is happening in the market, and to better understand how we have arrived at our assessments on that particular day. The reporter should file commentaries as news stories before midday if markets are volatile or unusually interesting; avoid repetitive and formulaic commentaries, where the same structures and phrases are used every day; closely monitor relevant inter-product and inter-region spreads; and ensure commentaries meet our editorial standards for writing and reporting.

Report News About The Markets

The market reporter is responsible for reporting news and analysis relating to their market. The news should help our readers understand developments in the marketplace, whether the readers are traders, analysts, government regulators, working in the supply chain, or in another walk of life. Relevant stories include news about supply and demand developments, government data, new developments in regulations, trader movement news, general analysis of price trends, and other relevant topics. The market reporter should provide a good blend of standard news reporting—the news that needs to be done—with creative "enterprise" reporting that generates original reporting for S&P Global Platts; file a reasonable quantity of stories relevant to their markets while prizing the quality and originality of news reports over sheer quantity alone; regularly file stories before lunchtime; work closely with the news desk, the Managing Editor, and others to identify and write good news stories; demonstrate a strong sense of what news our readers want to see, and be a vocal contributor to regular news meetings with the team.

Engage With The Industry

The market reporter is responsible for engaging with market sources around the region, including those who are not regularly in the Market-on-Close assessment process. Excellent engagement helps ensure we are close to market developments, methodology development is strong, story writing is creative, and that channels of communication are established and open with market sources. The market reporter should find and nurture new market sources; maintain a good relationship with existing sources; ensure source lists are up to date and stored on the network in line with our Editorial Standard for source maintenance; send summaries of meetings to manager and immediate colleagues; avoid an over-reliance on Instant Messaging; try to talk to each source at least once a week; organise regular in-person meetings with sources (lunch/coffee/office); handle complaints in line with Editorial Standard for complaints management

Other Required Accountabilities

Meet deadlines: In the office by 9.30am London time; Publish assessments by 6.30pm; Publish commentaries by 7.00pm.
Meet Platts’ editorial standards: Ensure all methodology initiatives are managed through Appian
Meet Platts’ editorial standards: Follow house reporting style
Meet Platts’ editorial standards: Correct less than 0.25% of assessments published
Meet Platts’ editorial standards: Handle enquiries and complaints effectively

Essential Skills

Strong numerical skills
Strong writing skills
Strong interpersonal & communication skills
Ability to perform well with tight deadlines
Experience of relevant reporting or analytical experience desirable (new graduates will be considered with appropriate skills training)