Forecasting volatility for options valuation

The petroleum sector plays a neuralgic role in the basement of world economies, and market actors (producers, intermediates, as well as consumers) are continuously subjected to the dynamics of unstable oil market. Huge amounts are being invested along the production chain to make one barrel of crude oil available to the end user. Adding to that are the effect of geopolitical dynamics as well as geological risks as expressed in terms of low chances of successful discoveries. In addition, fiscal regimes and regulations, technology and environmental concerns are also among some of the major factors that contribute to the substantial risk in the oil industry and render the market structure vulnerable to crises. The management of these vulnerabilities require modern tools to reduce risk to a certain level, which unfortunately is a non-zero value. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to provide a modern technique to capture the oil price stochastic volatility that can be implemented to value the exposure of an investor, a company, a corporate or a Government. The paper first analyses the regional dependence on oil prices, through a historical perspective and then looks at the evolution of pricing environment since the large price jumps of the 1970s. The main causes of oil prices volatility are treated in the third part of the paper. The rest of the article deals with volatility models and forecasts used in risk management, with an implication for pricing derivatives.