Archive for April, 2025

Pakistan’s Mineral Diplomacy and Importance in the Context of Pakistan-US Ties

Via The Geopolitics, commentary on the Pakistan’s mineral diplomacy: The Pakistan Minerals Forum was held in Islamabad on April 8–9, 2025. Representatives from several countries, including the US and China, attended this forum Eric Meyer, senior official at the State Department Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, at a meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz […]

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How Does a Nation Charm China? Name a Boulevard After Xi Jinping.

Courtesy of The New York Times, a report on how China is the biggest foreign patron of Cambodia, where Mr. Xi concluded a tour of Southeast Asia. But the region also needs to curry favor with President Trump. Xi Jinping Boulevard runs a loop around Cambodia’s fast-growing capital, where signs in Chinese are rapidly overtaking […]

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Mali Threatens Takeover of Barrick Mine as Dispute Escalates

Via Bloomberg, a report on Mali’s threatened takeover of Barrick’s Mali mine: Barrick Gold Corp. said Mali has shut its office in the nation’s capital and is threatening to take over its gold operations. Mali warned it would place the company’s shuttered Loulo-Gounkoto complex under provisional administration unless the mine is reopened and tax payments made, […]

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How China Took Over the World’s Rare Earths Industry

Via the New York Times, an article on how China took over the world’s rare earths industry: China shook the world in 2010 when it imposed an embargo on exports of crucial rare earth metals to Japan. Panicked Japanese executives appeared on television to warn that they were running out of the critical raw materials. The embargo, […]

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The Mine Is American. The Minerals Are China’s.

Courtesy of the New York Times, a report on how a Brazilian rare earths mine backed by American investors illustrates China’s grip over the strategic minerals that underpin the modern economy. The gaping pit alongside a tiny town in rural Brazil has all the elements to solve the West’s sudden problem of finding critical rare earth metals […]

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China Frets About Its Dependence on Africa’s Resources As U.S. Muscles In

Via South China Morning Post, a look at how China has heavily invested to secure raw materials from African nations, but US accusations over those deals pose new risks: A leading Chinese industry association has warned the country risks becoming too dependent on raw materials from individual nations in Africa, as the continent becomes a […]

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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.