Afghanistan’s Untapped Mineral Wealth: Lost Opportunity or Path To Stability?
January 31st, 2025
Via Amu.tv, commentary on Afghanistan’s mineral potential: Under the Taliban’s current regime, Afghanistan faces an unprecedented erosion of civil freedoms, especially for women. Deprived of their fundamental rights to education, work, and participation in public life, Afghan women endure a gender apartheid that starkly contrasts with international norms. The Taliban’s oppressive policies have not only […]
Read more »Tiny Steps for TAPI in the Taliban’s Afghanistan
January 16th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a report that Taliban authorities say that around 3 kilometers of the pipeline has been completed, out of more than 770 km needed to bring Turkmen gas to the Pakistani border: Four months after inaugurating work on the Serhetabat-Herat section of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of […]
Read more »Afghanistan Continues to Refine Its Extraction Strategy
January 11th, 2025
Via The Diplomat, an article on how the Taliban are gradually increasing revenue streams from resource extraction operations in an effort to minimize the impact of Western pressure: As the Taliban crack sharply down on non-governmental organizations and women’s rights, its government is gradually increasing revenue streams from resource extraction operations as it seeks to […]
Read more »Emeralds for Sale: The Taliban Look Below Ground to Revive the Economy
January 6th, 2025
Courtesy of the New York Times, an article on the Taliban government which is counting on Afghanistan’s bountiful gemstone and mineral resources after the loss of billions of dollars in international aid: In a chilly auditorium in Afghanistan, heaps of freshly mined green emeralds glowed under bright table lamps as bearded gemstone dealers inspected them for […]
Read more »Afghanistan’s Horse Power: What History Can Teach Today’s Petrostates
December 16th, 2024
Via Fortune, an article on how the fall of Afghanistan’s horse power is a lesson to today’s petrostates: power based on a strategic commodity is fleeting. Afghanistan’s Taliban government accepted a $10 billion investment in the country’s mines last year. The funds came from a Chinese company, part of a years-long effort by the world’s second-largest economy […]
Read more »Mapping Afghanistan’s Untapped Natural Resources
December 5th, 2024
Via Al Jazeera, a report on Afghanistan’s untapped natural resources: Deep beneath the ground in one of the world’s poorest countries sits at least $1 trillion of untapped mineral resources, according to a report published by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum [PDF]. The South Asian country of 38 million people is estimated to hold […]
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.