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 »China Deepens Its Engagement With Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan
December 3rd, 2024
Courtesy of The Diplomat, a look at China’s vastly increased economic engagement with Afghanistan as it eyes a new node in the Belt and Road Initiative: On August 15, 2021, the Taliban took over Kabul and forced the U.S.-installed government of President Ashraf Ghani to escape overseas. From then on, the Taliban have ruled Afghanistan. […]
Read more »China Offers Taliban Tariff-Free Trade, Inches Closer To Regime
October 25th, 2024
Via Nikkei Asia, an article on the Taliban efforts to find foreign investors willing to help it diversify its economy and profit from its mineral wealth, but Afghanistan exported no commodities to China last year: China will offer the Taliban tariff-free access to its vast construction, energy and consumer sectors, Beijing’s envoy to Afghanistan said […]
Read more »Secret Negotiations Around Afghanistan’s Oil
October 24th, 2024
Via YouTube, an interesting documentary on the legacy of secret negotiations between Afghanistan and America to build a pipeline through Afghanistan:
Read more »China’s Evolving Strategy in South and Central Asia
October 16th, 2024
Via The Diplomat, a look at how China’s growing footprint in South and Central Asia has been made possible by the influx of grants, loans, mergers, and economic concessions for projects: In the middle of the Pamir mountains, near the remote Tajik-Afghan border area of Badakhshan, I find myself staring at a large red banner […]
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.