Sonangol: National Oil Company And Government Backbone
September 2nd, 2014
Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), an interesting look at Sonangol, Angola’s national oil company: Summary Before Angola’s independence in 1975, Portugal imposed a contentious and hastily thrown together power-sharing deal among Angola’s three main ethnic groups: the Bakongo, Mbundu and Ovimbundu. This pact unraveled quickly after independence as Angola descended into a three-way civil war. […]
Read more »From New York Heroin Dealer To Afghanistan’s Biggest Oil Man
July 8th, 2014
Via Reuters, an interesting story on Afghanistan’s nascent oil industry: One-eyed Rateb Popal’s debut as an Afghan businessman was not promising: he was caught smuggling heroin and locked up in a New York federal prison for almost a decade. Popal had better luck once back in Afghanistan, where he emerged from obscurity to make millions […]
Read more »Sinopec’s $1.2bn deal With Lukoil: China Moves Deeper Into Central Asia
April 15th, 2014
Courtesy of the Financial Times, a report on Sinopec’s recent acquisition of Lukoil assets in Kazakhstan: Lukoil has agreed to sell its stake in several oil projects in Kazakhstan to Sinopec for $1.2bn, in the latest of a string of Chinese investments in the country’s energy sector. The Russian company – the country’s largest private-sector […]
Read more »Petroleo Brasileiro: A South American Sleeping Monster?
April 2nd, 2014
Via Guru Focus, an article on Petroleo Brasileiro: My advisor during college was the son of a retired Brazilian military official. Before turning to academics he was an advisor for the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations. Surely the man lacked no patriotism for the country that educated him. However, he displayed a great deal of […]
Read more »Russia-China Gas Deal…Maybe Later
March 2nd, 2014
Courtesy of The Financial Times, a look at the possibility of a strategic gas deal between Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC): As the global market for natural gas is transformed, Russia and its national champion Gazprom have found their long-term export strategy challenged. No longer able to rely on their core European […]
Read more »The Great Venezuelan Oil Bust
February 10th, 2014
Via the Globe and Mail, an interesting look at Venezuela’s petroleum industry: When Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramirez recently announced an ambitious new target of six million barrels per day by 2019, the state-run press heralded the imminent expansion of an industry vital to the country’s health. But people here heard the news and rolled […]
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.