Errors have infiltrated reports of Russian-Turkish gas negotiations. Correcting them reveals that Russia is trying to take advantage of the deterioration of EU-Turkey relations, but Turkey is not taking the bait.
Continue reading →Interview on John Batchelor Show, WABC-AM 770 (New York City), 22 January 2015. … Continue reading →
Russia continues to play hardball with natural gas for the European Union, trying to get Brussels to sacrifice Ukraine in return for the promise of better relations with Moscow. This geo-economic and power-political jousting is conditioned by the fact that EU sanctions against Russia will begin to expire in three phases between March and July unless there is an EU consensus to keep them in place.
Continue reading →Interview on John Batchelor Show, WABC-AM 770 (New York City), 23 December 2014. … Continue reading →
Islamic State has made Iraqi-Kurdish energy cooperation more likely, helping to guarantee lower world oil prices for the medium-term future. Under threat of their common enemy, the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in the north … Continue reading →
It is rare that a great power in world politics, after decades of hostility with another country, turns around and suddenly seeks to embrace that country as a friend, if not an ally, yet this is what the recent American … Continue reading →
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq has announced a plan to construct an oil pipeline to Turkey with a volume of 1 million barrels per day (bpd), move hinting at tectonic shifts in the geo-economics and associated geopolitics … Continue reading →
The president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Rovnag Abdullaev, has announced that the US$8 billion-plus Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline may be expanded four-fold from its initially planned volume of 8-16 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) to as … Continue reading →
The debate over Iran and its relations with the international community tends to gloss over how Iran threatens Azerbaijan sovereignty. It has taken on such a character that egregious errors of fact and logic cannot be allowed to stand, especially … Continue reading →
The French energy major Total this weekend announced yet another major natural gas discovery in the Caspian Sea offshore from Azerbaijan. The Absheron block is located to the east of the better-known Shah Deniz field (in which Total has a … Continue reading →