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 »Russia’s Energy Secret and The Chinese Threat
December 30th, 2007
A very interesting article in Newsweek, which details that – despite its aggressive energy-related dealings – Russia can barely meet its own demand. While reading this report, I can’t help but think of the Cold War years in which Russia (and other states for that matter) aggressively portrayed & projected its strength internationally, while the […]
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.