Archive for October, 2020

Tajikistan: Is Energy Export The Only Way Out of The Revenue Dilemma?

Via Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting, analysis of Tajikistan’s energy sector: Low revenues and underdeveloped infrastructure are among various problems inscribed in Tajikistan’s energy sector. The authorities are seeking to invest in hydroenergy, which, as believed, will pave the way towards reaching the status of regional energy exporter. The issue of unreliable energy supply […]

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How China Can Tighten Its Belt and Road Initiative In Central Asia

Via South China Morning Post, commentary on how China should veer away from large-scale, top-down investments and seek to work with local companies to build sustainable projects that benefit Central Asians and minimize government corruption: This February, hundreds of residents of At-Bashy, a mountain town in Kyrgyzstan, gathered to protest against the construction of a new […]

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Kazakhstan: Economy In Transition

Via Global Finance, an article on how Kazakhstan’s evolution to a market economy hinges on diversifying away from oil and gas, with a lift from FDI: Kazakhstan occupies a position halfway between two systems, says Yerlik Karazhan, an independent economic analyst in Nur-Sultan, the nation’s capital. No longer a Soviet-style command economy, “We’re definitely going […]

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COVID-19 Wipes Out East Timor’s Dreams of Oil and Gas Riches

Via Nikkei Asia, a report on Timor Leste: COVID-19 and the global collapse in oil and gas prices appear to have put the final nail into the coffin of East Timor’s long-held dream to create a domestic petroleum industry that would end its dependence on foreign aid and secure its viability as a sovereign state. […]

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The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’s Return to the Shadows

Via The Diplomat, commentary on how the CPEC has been a chastening experience for China in the context of the BRI: In the five years since the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was launched, it’s been beset by the winds of local politics and the waves of geopolitics alike. In a new report, titled “Returning to the […]

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Will Laos Become a Model for China’s Economic Colonialism?

Via Fair Observer, a report on how – as Laos braces for the economic impact of COVID-19 – China’s Belt and Road Initiative project in the border town of Boten may become a model of economic colonialism in Southeast Asia: The small Southeast Asian nation of Laos stands out as a success story in COVID-19 […]

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ABOUT
WILDCATS AND BLACK SHEEP
Wildcats & Black Sheep is a personal interest blog dedicated to the identification and evaluation of maverick investment opportunities arising in frontier - and, what some may consider to be, “rogue” or “black sheep” - markets around the world.

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.