Russia to train rebels in Ukraine

Russia’s natural gas will continue to flow to Ukraine, following a new deal. The deal comes despite ongoing tensions between the two neighbors over the conflict in eastern Ukraine where Russian military trainers have arrived to support pro-Russian rebels. While a shaky ceasefire takes hold in more areas, news media report Russia is reducing its […]

Nigeria Is a Case Study in the Curse of Oil

Muhammadu Buhari won the Nigerian presidential election based on his promises to clean up one of the world’s most corrupt countries. Alas, similar hopes attended the rise of outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan, who initially fooled many of us watching Africa but wound up turning Nigeria into a case study in how not to manage an […]

The case for an extraction tax

Governor Wolf has proposed a 5 percent extraction tax on Marcellus Shale gas. The new tax is projected to raise an additional $1 billion in revenue each year. Will this work in Pennsylvania? First, some background on U.S. natural gas sources and markets. Most of our country’s gas is consumed in the major population centers […]

Iran Deal May Be Slow to Affect Oil Sector

The breakthrough in nuclear talks with Iran on Thursday has the potential to cause a seismic shift in global energy markets over the long term, but energy experts said any appreciable impact on an already glutted global oil market was highly doubtful for at least six months and probably more than a year. Since the […]

Iran Negotiators Agree on Outline Nuclear Accord

Iran and world powers said they reached an outline accord that keeps them on track to end a decade-long nuclear dispute, allowing three more months to resolve differences that couldn’t be bridged in the past week’s diplomatic marathon. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Twitter that solutions to the nuclear issue had been found and […]

Our Current Illusion Of Prosperity

 President Obama and Fed Chair Janet Yellen have been crowing about improving economic conditions in the US. Unemployment is down to 5.5 percent and growth in 2014 hit 2.2 percent.Journalists and economists point to this improvement as proof that quantitative easing was effective. Pile on More Debt Unfortunately, this latest boom is artificial and has […]

Yemen’s Shiite rebels capture presidential palace

Yemeni security officials say Shiite rebels and their allies have captured the presidential palace in Aden following heavy clashes in the commercial center of this southern coastal city. Thursday’s capture came despite week-long airstrikes in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition trying to halt the advance of the rebels known as Houthis. Aden’s Maasheeq palace is […]

Ukraine signs deal to buy Russian gas

* To cover low demand season, talks on winter continue * Russia had flagged lower price * Ukraine sees a more commercial attitude in talks Ukraine has signed an interim deal for cheaper supplies of gas from Russia for the next three months, providing a breathing space for both sides in their protracted wrangle over […]

The Hidden Effects of Cheap Oil

What do Russia, Exxon Mobil, and ISIS have in common? Not much, except that they’re all grappling with an inconvenient but incontrovertible truth: a sudden, significant, and prolonged shift in the price of oil changes the world. That truth was on display in 1974, and it’s on display again now. Over the course of just […]

Cost no barrier to Saudi Arabia’s Yemen intervention

Despite a record budget deficit caused by low oil prices, Saudi Arabia can easily afford its military intervention in Yemen and cost is unlikely to limit the duration or scale of its operations, military analysts believe. The world’s biggest oil exporter is acting while it faces the heaviest pressure on its state finances for more […]

The battle for the Middle East’s future begins

Saudi Arabia has jumped into the abyss. Its air attacks on Yemen are a historic and potentially fatal blow to the Kingdom and to the Middle East. Who decided that this extraordinary battle should take shape in the poorest of Arab nations? The Saudis, whose King is widely rumoured in the Arab world to be […]

Ready for the Revolution

Once aggrandizers are given an inch of leeway under favorable resource conditions, they quickly stretch that inch into a mile and keep on going. — Brian Hayden Once upon a time, there lived the ancestral apes that gave rise to humans, chimpanzees and bonobos. In all likelihood, they lived in bands dominated by the strongest, […]

Geopolitics and Oil Prices: Between A Rock and a Hard Place

Oil traders appear to be hedging themselves against a possible deal between the West and Iran on the nuclear question but doing so misses the increasingly complex forces at play today in oil geopolitics. A Saudi analyst with close ties to the Saudi government issued a clear and effective description of the new Saudi government’s […]

Iran nuclear deal to see $20 oil if Tehran floods crude market

Flights to Tehran from Dubai have been crammed in recent months with Western executives flooding into the Iranian capital ahead of a potential lifting of economic sanctions. Potentially one of the Middle East’s biggest economies, Iran has been frozen out by the West over its refusal to give up its aspirations to become a nuclear […]

Arab Leaders Agree to Form Unified Military Force

Arab chiefs of staff will work out the details of the joint force, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said in announcing the decision at an Arab League meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. League Secretary General Nabil El-Arabi said the military chiefs will be invited to meet within a month, and a specific timetable will be […]

Saudi Arabia wants nuclear weapons

Saudi Arabia will not rule out building or acquiring nuclear weapons, the country’s ambassador to the United States has indicated. Asked whether Saudi Arabia would ever build nuclear weapons in an interview with US news channel CNN, Adel Al-Jubeir said the subject was “not something we would discuss publicly”. Pressed later on the issue he […]

U.S. and Iran Fighting Islamic State in Iraq

Michael Weiss discusses the U.S. and Iran fighting Islamic State in Iraq and the funding of Islamic State. He speaks with Alix Steel on “Street Smart.”

Pentagon drops 60,000 leaflets on Islamic State

The Pentagon has dropped 60,000 leaflets over the Syrian town of Ar-Raqqa in an effort to dissuade residents from joining the Islamic State terror group. On March 16, an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter dropped a specialized leaflet-dispenser bomb over the town of Raqqa for the first time ever in Syria, according to Col. […]

Pentagon Sending Troops Into Ukraine In April

According to a Department of Defense press release, the Pentagon is sending 290 US service members into Ukraine to train Ukrainian military units in April. The training will reportedly occur in the Ukrainian city of Yavoriv near the Ukraine-Poland border. The US soldiers will be from the 173rd Airborne Brigade based in Vicenza, Italy. The […]

Fears That Iran Will ‘Flood’ the Oil Market Exaggerated

Oil industry experts say it is unlikely that Iran will flood the market with oil if sanctions are lifted as a result of Iranian nuclear talks, quelling fears that the talks would spook the markets. Negotiations between Iran and the U.S., UK, France, Russia, China and Germany – the so-called P5+1 group – reconvene this […]

Nuclear Safety in a Post-Fukushima World

A gate to exclusion zone is seen in abandoned town, located about 8km from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 9, 2014 in Fukushima, Japan. On March 11 Japan commemorates the third anniversary of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that claimed more than 18,000 lives, and subsequent nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi […]

U.S. Caves to Key Iranian Demands

The Obama administration is giving in to Iranian demands about the scope of its nuclear program as negotiators work to finalize a framework agreement in the coming days, according to sources familiar with the administration’s position in the negotiations. U.S. negotiators are said to have given up ground on demands that Iran be forced to […]

Why Bombing the 39th Biggest Oil Producer Is Roiling the Market

While Yemen contributes less than 0.2 percent of global oil output, its location puts it near the center of world energy trade. The nation shares a border with Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, and sits on one side of a shipping chokepoint used by crude tankers heading West from the Persian Gulf. Global […]

Coalition, Iraqi planes target IS militants in Tikrit

Coalition and Iraqi planes struck a sprawling complex of palaces in the city of Tikrit on Thursday where Islamic State militants have been holding out for more than three weeks. U.S.-led coalition planes launched their first air strikes against Islamic State targets in Saddam Hussein’s home city on Wednesday, coming off the sidelines to aid […]

Saudi ambassador announces military campaign in Yemen

The Saudi ambassador to the United States says his country has begun airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who drove out the U.S.-backed Yemeni president. Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir says the operations began at 7 p.m. Eastern time. He says the Houthis, widely believed to be backed by Iran, “have always chosen the path of […]

Arab leaders confronted with multiple crises

Arab leaders meeting at a summit this week face rapidly deteriorating conflicts in Yemen and Libya, but have yet to agree on a concrete plan to counter a growing threat from Islamist militant groups and regional chaos. Yemen’s crisis will be high on the agenda at the March 28-29 Arab League meeting in the Egyptian […]

Jordan signs $10 billion nuclear power plant deal with Russia

Jordan signed an agreement with Russia on Tuesday worth $10 billion that sets the legal basis for building the kingdom’s first nuclear power plant with a total capacity of 2,000 megawatt. Jordan imports nearly 98 percent of its energy from oil products and crude and is struggling to meet electricity demand which is growing by […]

Financial Feudalism

Once upon a time—and a fairly long time it was—most of the thickly settled parts of the world had something called feudalism. It was a way of organizing society hierarchically. Typically, at the very top there was a sovereign (king, prince, emperor, pharaoh, along with some high priests). Below the sovereign were several ranks of […]

Revolution, War, Taxes

Paul Tudor Jones ruffled more than a few feathers last week when he warned first that “we’re in the middle of a disastrous market mania,” and second he explained that “this gap between the 1 percent and the rest of America, and between the US and the rest of the world, cannot and will not […]

Using Iraq and Libya as a Lens

Every presidential candidate should face pressure to answer, explicitly, these two questions: Given what we now know, was it right or wrong to invade Iraq in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein and, eight years later, to help topple the regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya? Force the contenders to skip the partisan talking points and […]

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