Russian Energy Giants: A Rough Road Ahead
October 16th, 2015
Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), interesting commentary on Rosneft and Gazprom: Forecast Rosneft will face difficulty as Moscow prioritizes the government’s financial and political needs over those of the oil firm. Gazprom’s piped natural gas export monopoly will eventually end, spurring competition between the Russian energy firms for customers at home and abroad. Russian President […]
Read more »The ISIS Economy
October 8th, 2015
Via Vox, a look at the business of ISIS: ISIS has a lot of money. But we don’t know for sure how much or where it comes from. Which is why a very rare leak of ISIS’s internal books, published Monday on the blogJihadology, is so interesting. One leading terrorism researcher says it’s “possibly the best available primary […]
Read more »European Investors Bet On Pakistan’s Leading Technology Startups
October 8th, 2015
Via Frontera, an interesting look at Pakistan’s online market sector: Pakistan maintains the world’s sixth largest population, and online businesses there dream of the untapped potential among its consumer base of nearly 200 million people. However, with nationwide internet penetration currently at only 15%, that potential may remain untapped for some time to come. Nonetheless, foreign investors […]
Read more »Investing in Iran? You’d Better Like Tea, Cake and Bureaucracy
October 5th, 2015
Courtesy of Bloomberg, a report on Iran: Isolated from the global economy for the past decade and with a population of 80 million, Iran is a fertile ground for business. But international investors will have to cope with obstacles including government control of as much as 70 percent of the economy. When Mahdi Yazdizadeh tried […]
Read more »Mexico’s Crude Capitalism
October 5th, 2015
Courtesy of Foreign Policy, a look at Mexico’s new model of Latin American energy policy: When, in 2013, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced a broad reform package that would end the government’s monopoly over the country’s oil sector, his argument was fairly straightforward: Foreign investment could be just the thing to reverse a decade […]
Read more »Iraq: A Fragile State With A Fragile Economy
September 30th, 2015
Via the Atlantic Council, a look at Iraq’s economy: Protesters display a huge Iraqi flag during a demonstration against corruption and poor services in regard to power cuts and water shortages, in Kerbala, southwest of Baghdad, August 14, 2015. There is little to envy in the life of embattled Iraqi Premier Haider al-Abadi, who is […]
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.