Energy Archive

Pakistani and Indian officials met earlier this month to discuss cross-border energy cooperation, perhaps signaling that the new government in Islamabad aims to follow through on plans its predecessor spent years talking about. That would be good for both countries. Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party swept Pakistan’s parliamentary election in May, and Sharif took over as prime minister early this month, pledging—among other things—to improve relations with India and address his country’s crippling energy shortage. On June 11, the prime minister’s younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, the head of government in Pakistan’s largest province, Punjab, reportedly met officials from […]

One can picture Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner watching the recent protests in Brazil with more than a little satisfaction. After all, Argentina and Brazil, perennial rivals in countless fields, are both facing challenging times. And Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, has had strained relations with her neighbor across the border. But don’t confuse the troubles in Brazil with those in Argentina. Fernandez’s woes are to a large extent of her own making, and that’s a view that Rousseff has expressed to her Argentinian counterpart. Both countries may have experienced slowing growth and mass protests, but while Argentinians protested against […]

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently concluded his first trip in years to Irbil, capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, without having made any tangible progress toward resolving the feud between the central Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurds, who are developing their own energy industry and exporting oil to Turkey. Discussing the position of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) amid regional turmoil, the experts who spoke with Trend Lines emphasized the Kurds’ interest in normalizing relations with Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. “By seeking a future with Turkey instead of Iraq, some Kurdish leaders may think they do […]

This month, China and the U.S. concluded a deal to “phase down” emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a highly polluting form of greenhouse gas. In an email interview, Adam Moser, assistant director of the U.S.-China Partnership for Environmental Law at Vermont Law School, explained the difficulty the U.S. and China have had on climate change cooperation and the significance of the recent agreement. WPR: What in the past has limited cooperation between the U.S. and China on climate change? Adam Moser: First, both countries have domestic political situations and interest groups that have contributed to their limited cooperation on climate change, […]

The annual plenary meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) later this month in Prague will focus attention once again on India’s application for membership in the group. Since 2008, India has been campaigning to join the NSG, which governs all legal transfer of nuclear technology and material globally. While the India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal concluded that year raised India’s hopes of inclusion, the NSG remains bitterly divided over the issue, with a U.S.-led bloc supporting India’s candidature and a China-led bloc vehemently opposing its entry into the group. The stand-off has frustrated India’s deep-seated desire to become an equal […]

Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River is creating serious tension among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. There is a fear in Egypt that the large storage capability of the dam will put control of valuable Nile water in the hands of upstream Ethiopia. Egyptian leaders have regularly issued threats to deter Ethiopia from completing the project, without much success. Meanwhile, Sudan, which has had a water-sharing agreement with Egypt on the Nile since 1959, has sided with Ethiopia, heightening uncertainty in Cairo over the future of Nile water sharing. The Renaissance Dam project has been […]

French President Francois Hollande’s three-day visit to Tokyo, where he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, resulted in major agreements on nuclear cooperation and joint development of military hardware. The summit, which also covered a range of other topics, reflected the noticeable improvement in recent years of the two countries’ already solid bilateral ties. Despite often being rivals for foreign contracts, Japan and France remain closely bound through cooperation on advanced technologies. Indeed, the agreement to increase nuclear cooperation was not a total surprise considering that a French-Japanese consortium just won a lucrative $22 billion joint bid to develop […]

For all the focus on contemporary Iran, relatively little attention is paid to its trilateral ties with Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the geolinguistic remnants of an eclectic series of empires collectively denominated Persian. Since 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made it a point to revive Persian nationalism, contrasting it with the clerical elite’s claim to Islam as the exclusive basis of Iranian identity. Significantly, Ahmadinejad’s nationalist rhetoric was accompanied by a raft of summits, forums and agreements among the three countries, which he called “limbs of the same body,” echoing the 13th-century Persian poet Saadi. Despite the historical echoes, however, […]