Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,6, Humboldt-University of Berlin (School of Business and Economics ), course: Power Games in Energy Markets, language: English, abstract: Crude oil is currently the most important source of energy in the world. Thanks to advanced production and extraction methods, and due to new discoveries, the available reserves have grown over the last ten years. During this period of time, oil prices rose considerably. These increases in price are associated with the increasing energy demands of growing economies across the planet and a shifting of weight between the physical and financial oil market. The goal of this work is to examine the correlation between physical and financial crude oil markets as well as establish an explanation for the drastic increase in crude oil price in the past decade. The work is organized as follows: To begin, the characteristics of crude oil as well as its value chain are presented and examined. This is followed by an explanation of the physical and financial oil trade. To conclude, the fundamentals of the world oil market and the financial oil trade are examined to determine the relevance of causation with respect to the recent price increase.