Demystifying the oil price fluctuations and mitigating its effect on the nations

Abstract

This paper studies the causes of oil price fluctuations in the last fifty years and critically analyses the factors affecting the oil price. It also put forth the business problem of loss incurred by the oil-importing countries like India due to oil price fluctuations and gives the solution to lower the severity of the loss incurred by them. The findings are based on the ANOVA test carried out using the prices of the three major crude oil benchmarks such as WTI, Brent crude and OPEC. The findings of this study can be beneficial to the oil-importing nations whose portfolio is less diversified, and they can mitigate the adverse effect of possible oil price fluctuations.