Dialing for Dollars (or Dirhams?): Gulf Arab Telcos Expanding Their Area Codes
January 21st, 2008
Two recent reports on Gulf Arab telecom operators continuing their expansionist trends out of their home markets, where most have been riding a wave of economic growth spurred by a five-fold increase in oil prices since 2002. First, an article detailing Saudi Telecom’s – the largest Arab telecom firm by market value – $2.6 billion […]
Read more »Turkmenistan’s Pipeline Politics: Turkey, Iran, and Others Shiver Together
January 15th, 2008
There have been stories this past week or so about the severe winter and gas shortages in Iran, and their resulting cut in supplies to Turkey. The Iranian domestic shortage was supposed to be made up from Turkmenistan. Unfortunately the shortfall from Iran to Turkey was supposed to be made up by increased supplies from […]
Read more »Turk(ish)menistan…
December 9th, 2007
As reported by New Eurasia, Turkish President Abdullah Gül – during a three-day official visit to Turkmenistan – proposed the reinstatement of the project of a gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan to Turkey via Iran, with annual capacity of 16 billion cubic metres of gas. However, as the article notes, Gül’s visit was about more […]
Read more »Not Going Cold Turkey: Tehran and Ankara Work Together
December 3rd, 2007
An interesting article from UPI’s John Daly via Energy Daily, that points out that the Bush administration’s inattention to Turkish domestic and foreign policy concerns has produced the growing estrangement between the two nations and that Washington has nothing to offer Ankara in the energy sphere. As a necessity, Turkey has moved national energy concerns […]
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 »Azerbaijan – Projecting Outward
October 27th, 2007
 According to a recent Energy Daily report, Azerbaijan – its $21 billion economy expanding at more than triple the rate of China’s in a world of record-high energy prices – has begun acquiring assets in neighboring states. “For instance, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan has started investing in the economies of Georgia, Turkey, and […]
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.