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: […]
Read more »Via OBOReurope, a look at Gwadar In early 2019, several states in Middle East announced their interest in the port of Gwadar in Pakistan. The port of Gwadar is the flagship project of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). With the opening of the CECP to the rest of the world, the port of Gwadar is likely […]
Read more »Courtesy of Reuters, an interesting report on the fall of the Bin Laden business empire: Soon after Prince Mohammed bin Salman became second in line to the throne of Saudi Arabia, he turned his sights to the sprawling empire of the Saudi Binladin Group. In 2015, the prince, then 29, approached Bakr bin Laden, chairman of […]
Read more »Via Times of Central Asia, a report on Ashgabat’s efforts to diversify its gas exports and find investors in its hydrocarbon projects: Turkmenistan possesses huge natural-gas reserves but for now has only one buyer of its gas — China. As the Turkmen economy is experiencing a downturn caused by low gas prices in the world market, […]
Read more »Via Future Directions International, an article looking at Saudi Arabia and China’s investment influence in Pakistan: Background During his visit to Pakistan in 2015, President Xi of China entered into an agreement with Islamabad to invest around US$46 billion in the country. It was estimated that a full 80 per cent of that sum – […]
Read more »Courtesy of The New York Times, a detailed interesting look at Saudi Arabia, where low crude prices and the war in Yemen have sent a shock through the kingdom’s budget and forced it to revise its social contract even as it seeks to diversify its businesses: This is what it takes to run a mega-dairy […]
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