Via The Economist, an article on the impact of the demise of easy oil money: Their budgets don’t add up anymore. Algeria needs the price of Brent crude, an international benchmark for oil, to rise to $157 dollars a barrel. Oman needs it to hit $87. No Arab oil producer, save tiny Qatar, can balance […]
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: […]
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 – […]
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