... was dominated by seven oil majors, or the 'seven sisters', who reflected the global power balance – with USA and still Great Britain dominating this list. Today, many of the top Western oil companies draw their roots from these original ... ... formulated by a cost-plus system for crude and now net-back for other petroleum products. Again, the seven sisters preferred long-term contracts and also used modern concessional tools to account for socio-economic factors. But, in 1969 to 1973 a major ...
... suppliers enter the market (e.g. Qatar). By 2020 the market will need an extra 50 bcm on top of the existing contracts as certain long-term contracts end, but supply will increase by 250 bcm in essence flooding the market and leading to old contracts to be ... ... in Qatar (see: QatarGas, RasGas) which will amount to 1/5 of the total and we are anticipating a possible export trend from USA. The growth in production of unconventional gas will allow the US to start exporting gas by the middle of the current decade ...
... of Russia and China results in an unprecedented regional Rubik’s cube, except no colour is the same and the two players are colour-blind with suspicion and a long history of flip-flopping between sides (e.g. China's Détente with USA, Russia's Détente with USA etc).
Power Triangle - Sino-Russian Mutuality on US:
The first and foremost issue that Russia and China can find a common ground on, as Mitrova sees, is the joint dislike of the US hegemony. It is a ...
... and European sovereign and corporate bonds. This historically unprecedented ‘savings glut’ flooded the markets with cheap money. This, coupled with low interest rates across the whole eurozone, fuelled credit and real estate bubbles in the USA and Europe, which burst in 2008-9 amid the global ‘credit crunch’.
At first, this led to a pan-European banking crisis, followed by a sovereign debt crisis triggered by Greece’s unsustainable public deficit and debt levels in late ...
... companies and academics nevertheless did not abandon the possibility that it could become a reliable partner for South Korea gas needs. Perhaps, in the perfect world, where the last delegate to DPRK is not Denis Rodman and it does not want to destroy USA, both South and North could cooperate in all fields, including energy matters.
At a junction – ES-2030:
ES-2030 follows a tradition of Russia’s psychological affection to large scale projects with political elites at the helm....
... news for players involved (See: Interfax). Due to these deals China will overtake Germany as a top destination for Russian oil. USA and China currently both import around 6 million barrels of oil per day, with latter forecasted to overtake the long-time ... ... its customers compete against each other (See: Reuters). However, on the brightside Gazprom agreed with China in regards to long-term contracts, thus allowing it to develop the riskier fields as export was more guaranteed. At first, I was sceptical about ...
... consumers. But, recently Europe has shifted from shrewd trade to the reengineering of the energy sector, which does not account for industry realities or Russian and peculiarly even its own interests as it is undermining its own energy security.
Long-Term Contracts a No-No:
An area of contention stimulating uncertainty is the debate amid long-term contracts and hub trading which is set to be introduced across Europe. An official justification is that Europe feels that gas is overpriced and ...
... aiming to agree 10 year long contracts with the Middle East, aside from this being a double-standard as it tends to avoid Russian long-term contracts by saying short-term hub trading without a fixed price is the future, the issue remains that this is not a ... ... begin to lose market share – which has not changed in the last decade. The decision must be well calculated, yet quick, as USA has almost achieved independence from energy imports due to shale which could supply North America, Australian shale could ...