China’s Growing Influence in Kazakhstan
December 6th, 2007
As noted in the Eurasia Daily Monitor, Kazakhstan – despite its efforts to symbolically broaden its foreign policy with recent Presidential visits to places such as Syria, UAE, and the Balkans – and investments such as KazMunayGaz’s recent acquisition of a 75% stake in Romania’s Rompetrol Group, the Balkan pipeline route and East European markets […]
Read more »The Largest Thanksgiving Day Sale Ever: Oil Producers Buy The World
November 28th, 2007
From the NY Times, more evidence that oil-producing countries have embarked upon a global shopping spree. While the focus is the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s bold outlay of $7.5 billion to become one of the largest shareholders in Citigroup, the article does a nice job of detailing many other petro-dollar based purchases that have taken […]
Read more »More Evidence that Big Oil Shrinking in Influence…
November 16th, 2007
In my 10 November post ($100 Oil: Creating a New World Order), I focused on the shift in power away from traditional Big Oil towards state run oil companies in some emerging nations. Steve LeVine, in his always informative Oil and Glory blog, offered further evidence today of the shrinking influence of Big Oil: “…After […]
Read more »Approaching Eurasia’s Tipping Point?
November 15th, 2007
As noted in a recent Stratfor report (subscription required), upcoming Azerbaijani and Turkmen talks about the legal status of the two countries’ maritime border in the Caspian Sea could well change the balance of power in Eurasia. As it writes: “…Russia has a number of tools at its disposal for affecting countries near it, but […]
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 »Pipe Down: A Summary of Central Asia’s Pipeline Wars
October 31st, 2007
 As always, an interesting post by Steve Levine, discussing the U.S. failure to match Russia so far in the European pipeline war. Since I’ve discussed various pipeline (and a few pipe dream) initiatives of late, I found this article to be a useful summary: “….Europe relies on Russia for more than 30% of its oil […]
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.