[wimgz]

In times of cheap oil prices, the forward curve is often in contango.

That means that the price for a prompt delivery is cheaper than a delivery in the future. So if you go long crude with futures, each month you have to roll your contracts before they expire, and buy a more expensive one. So you end up paying a premium.

Kinda like if you want to store oil to speculate, you have to pay for storage.

You might as well buy a basket of oil majors stocks, which are a pure play on oil prices

[ptero]

Agreed, which is why I do not want futures contracts, or any options with a set time horizon. I consider the current price to be a fluke, I am willing to make a significant bet that the prices will recover, but I do not know whether it will take 3 months or 5 years; I am willing to wait it out.

I understand that this will effectively mean paying a "storage premium", but I am looking to minimize such costs by pooling money with a large fund that does this for a living and has tools and agreements that I do not have.

On a basket of oil majors as a proxy: sorry, this sounds suspicious. I think there are a lot of factors beyond oil prices in play which should make those pretty well decorrelated from short term oil price movements. Is this really true? Honest question.