Via The Foreign Policy Research Institute, commentary on how China is using its natural gas purchases to influence Central Asia: Natural gas supplies to the People’s Republic of China have helped drive Central Asia’s economic growth for the last decade. For no country is this more true than for Turkmenistan: over 90 percent of Turkmenistan’s […]
Read more »Via the Lowy Institute, an article on how Central Asia’s economic fortunes are increasingly bound to Beijing: For China, the Covid-19 question is answered by more Belt and Road. As Foreign Minister Wang Yi put it at a press conference during the 13th National People’s Congress in Beijing last weekend: The impact of Covid-19 on the Belt and […]
Read more »Via Window on Eurasia, commentary on the potential for north-south trade in Central Asia: Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have agreed to promote the expansion of rail traffic from their countries through Iran to Oman and thus to the world ocean, a path that China will likely be the biggest beneficiary of and that will challenge Moscow’s […]
Read more »Via Eurasia Review, a look at the impact of China’s gas demand reductions on Central Asia: As China cuts back on its commitments to import natural gas, it is trying to spread the shortfall among its increasingly hard-pressed suppliers. Hints of tensions have been rising since early March when reports first surfaced that PetroChina, the […]
Read more »Via Eurasia Review, a report on COVID-19′s impact on China’s demand for natural gas from Central Asia: China’s COVID-19 outbreak has seen Beijing’s demand for natural gas stutter, after years of breakneck expansion. In February, China’s natural gas demand was estimated to have fallen 17 percent year-on-year, and while there were some subsequent indications of recovery for liquefied natural […]
Read more »Via Foreign Policy, commentary on the impact of the oil price crash to petrostates from Nigeria to Iran, where governments rely on oil wealth to stabilize power and pay off competing interests: The epic collapse in the price of oil, set off by Russia and Saudi Arabia last weekend, has obvious winners and losers. The winners: […]
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