Digital oil analytics firm OilX launched in November 2018 after many months of work on its core data offering. HC Insider met with CEO and co-founder Florian Thaler to learn more about the company
Everyone with experience of oil analytics is familiar with the problem of creating a solid view of global supply and demand fundamentals from the available data. After 15 years with some of the biggest names in oil trading, Florian Thaler decided to solve the problem by switching from data client to data provider. His company OilX looks a lot like the solution the industry has been waiting for.
Key Takeaways:
- The core problem is that oil market data is generally very choppy and hard to collect, and analysts using the data suffer from time lags in a big way. We try to bridge that gap for clients by combining the statistics with other, new data sets from the satellite space or the marine intelligence sector.
- OilX’s uniqueness lies in the fact that we believe in deep-domain expertise in everything we do, whether we’re looking at the oil market, the shipping market or the data-science framework.
- We create actual insights into conditions, giving a real-time mirror image of what the market’s status is. But it’s not a question of being right or wrong – our aim is to be scientifically rigorous so that we can deliver an accurate reading.
- The whole industry is working to unlock value, regardless of each company’s place in the value chain. The bigger picture is that we’re seeing a steady convergence from both ends of the supply chain, and that process will continue.
The oil market, like many others, is undergoing a shift. It’s moving away from being largely opinion-based to becoming a data-driven world, and operations moving with the trend will gain a competitive edge.
OilX only solves the fundamentals side of the puzzle, but we see ourselves as enablers for data-driven trading. The fundamentals side is giving an actual reading of the molecules and what is moving around the world. But it’s not enough to have the data alone. It’s vital to have the data storage and processing capacity to create a coherent view of the market, and that’s what OilX does.
View the full interview on the HC Insider website here.
