The arrival of War so soon after Pestilence or Plague has unsurprisingly led many to speculate (some idly, others determinedly) as to whether the Third of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse is due soon. That one of course is Famine. Such speculation has been fuelled by the co-ordinated attempts coming out of Davos last week to blame Russia for an upcoming food shortage.

At 1.03trillion cubic metres (tcm), Ukraine has the second largest gas reserves in Europe after Norway, and yet it is a net importer of gas, since it only produces 20bcm a year while consuming nearer 27bcm, leaving it with an import bill of tens of billions a year.

The realisation is slowly dawning on Europeans that not only have Zero Carbon policies pushed Europe to a dangerous dependency on unreliable renewables that need (mainly Russian) natural gas as a baseload, but that the biggest winners of this...

Some extreme fun and games in the Oil markets overnight as CL1, the generic first contract for WTI crude went below zero, hitting minus $42 at one point as the May contract expired.

The markets are largely behaving like q4 2018, but economically the virus is causing a working capital crisis more like 2008.