C it go — Chavez’s Petrocracy Scales Back Profits at Citgo
November 16th, 2007
A very interesting WSJ article on Citgo – which Venezuela bought two decades ago to market its hard-to-refine heavy oil – changing its focus to feed cash to President Chávez’s social programs in Venezuela.  As the article notes: “…while other U.S. refiners have invested heavily to take advantage of historically wide profit margins in the […]
Read more »A Rio Find: Brazil Finds a New Hydrocarbon Deposit
November 8th, 2007
Via RIA Novosti, news that a massive oil and gas deposit has been discovered in Brazil, which could make it one of the world’s leading hydrocarbon producers. “…the new field, discovered on the southwestern coast of the country, could contain between 5 and 8 billion barrels of light oil. If results of the initial research […]
Read more »Oiling the Silk Road…
November 8th, 2007
Kazakh national energy company KazMunaiGas announced that it – along with China National Petroleum Corporation – have agreed to build a natural gas pipeline linking Beijing to natural gas reserves in the Caspian Sea. The companies will use a 50-50 operator to construct and maintain the pipeline, which will be built in two phases in […]
Read more »Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. – A Study in Petrocracy
November 6th, 2007
I strongly recommend a terrific article by Tina Rosenberg in the New York Times magazine which describes the unexploited promise – and many problems – associated with Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (Pdvsa) under the current Venezuelan political regime in particular and nationalized oil in general. As the article notes: “…77 percent of the world’s oil […]
Read more »Angola: No. 2 in African Oil Reserves
October 22nd, 2007
Via Energy Daily, Angola’s national oil company – Sonangol E.P. – announced that 10 blocks will be offered for tender in a licensing round planned for late 2007, part of its efforts to capitalize on Africa’s No. 2 oil reserves. As the article notes, Angola possesses an estimated 10 billion to 20 billion barrels of […]
Read more »Central Asian Business Round Up
October 20th, 2007
An interesting round up of news from Central Asia Beat, including the following business & investment tidbits: Finland’s Nokian Tyres will be working with Kazakhstan’s Ordabasy JSC to build a factory in Astana. The tires will serve the Kazakh and Russian Markets, eventually going into Eastern European distribution. Germany will sponsor Kazakhstan at the WTO […]
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.