The Iron Silk Road? China’s Western Rails To Form Link With Central Asia
January 28th, 2008
As reported by Xinhua, China is planning to start construction on two railways linking its westernmost Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with the central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in 2008. Upon its completion in 2010, experts say the railway will provide a faster link between western China and central Asia and improve the […]
Read more »Pipe(dreams) and Plans: Condensed into a Pipette
January 9th, 2008
As always, a very interesting post by Steve LeVine focused primarily on the withdrawal of Thomas Pickering, the senior U.S. statesman who was to lead the high-level U.S. pipeline campaign on the Caspian. Mr. LeVine offers an intriguing alternative but, having detailed many posts on various pipeline initiatives in this blog, I thought that the […]
Read more »Virtuous Circle of Investing in Emerging Economies
January 7th, 2008
Very interesting comments by James Leitner (money manager for Falcon Management) in a recent edition of The Deal magazine regarding developing countries and the link between human rights & economic empowerment and prosperity in the developing world. As the article notes: “…Developing countries are no longer trapped at the periphery of the investable universe. Foreign […]
Read more »Frontier Markets – Now Part of Mainstream (Media) Thinking?
January 7th, 2008
As noted in a recent US News & World Report article, many investors are engaged in the hunt for the next generation of emerging markets. And, as we’ve discussed in this blog before, Goldman Sachs has identified 11 countries with BRIC-like possibilities, which include mainstream emerging markets like South Korea and Mexico as well as […]
Read more »Uzbekistan and A Russian Energy Battle: Part of Lukoil’s Capital Flight Plan?
January 4th, 2008
Via Stratfor (subscription required), a highly interesting analysis of Uzbekistan’s status as a large natural gas producer that is locked into Russia’s interests, even though it has many potential export options beyond its large neighbor. As the article notes: “…Uzbekistan, an often-ignored energy source in the heart of Central Asia, ranks among the world’s top […]
Read more »Big Oil = Dinosaurs at the Tar Pit?
December 30th, 2007
As we’ve discussed before, Big Oil is quickly losing its historical global primacy to state-owned oil and natural gas companies in Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, i.e. the New Seven Sisters. Two recent articles provide recent examples of this transition. In the first, Steve LeVine examines Exxon’s view that resource nationalism will moderate as […]
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.