An Iranian Exploration Deal With Italy
January 11th, 2008
Via Shana (Iran’s Petroenergy Information Network), news that the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Italian company Edison SpA signed a contract on the exploration of Dayyer Block, an 8,500 square kilometer area that comprises one of 17 offshore blocks in the Persian Gulf. Edison will invest $107 million dollars in the exploration. According to […]
Read more »Challenges & Opportunities Facing Emerging Markets in the Middle East & North Africa
January 10th, 2008
In a recent article published by Knowledge@Wharton, Howard Pack (a professor of business and public policy at Wharton) and Marcus Noland (a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics) examined how Arab countries are coping with globalization & exploiting the recent influx of hydrocarbon-based money into their economies. We found the following notes […]
Read more »BCG’s Global Challengers
January 10th, 2008
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recently came out with their annual list of Global Challengers, i.e. 100 large and particularly successful companies that are based in rapidly developing economies and going global fast. I always find this interesting reading; companies from 14 nations are highlighted (including Argentina, Chile, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Thailand, Turkey […]
Read more »Pipe(dreams) and Plans: Condensed into a Pipette
January 9th, 2008
As always, a very interesting post by Steve LeVine focused primarily on the withdrawal of Thomas Pickering, the senior U.S. statesman who was to lead the high-level U.S. pipeline campaign on the Caspian. Mr. LeVine offers an intriguing alternative but, having detailed many posts on various pipeline initiatives in this blog, I thought that the […]
Read more »Frontier Markets: Turning Tables on Traditional Concepts & Making Up for Lost Time
January 8th, 2008
As noted in this report from Seeking Alpha, frontier markets are apt to continue to become more and more common considerations for investors. In fact, even though this blog is partially oriented around such maverick investing environments, one can’t help but wonder – given the number of articles recently focused on frontier markets – if […]
Read more »Big Oil: Merging Into the Future?
January 7th, 2008
Having recently examined the possibility of the first Supermajor from the developing world being established (via a link between Angola and Petrobras), we must not forget that Big Oil still exists (even in a marginalized sense). Steve LeVine offers some very interesting thoughts as to what Big Oil may do in light of the rise […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.