Energy Archive

I carry a plastic chair over to sit with Pastor Samuel Tewogbola outside his house in the southern Nigerian town of Igarra. The family goat wanders past us, nosing the earth. It’s November 2014, and I am doing preliminary research for a future book. Tewogbola is a fire-and-brimstone preacher—43 years in a hard-line Pentecostal church. When I arrived with my friend Esther, his daughter, he made us all kneel in his doorway while he intoned thanks to Jesus for our safe journey. We’re philosophizing, talking about what makes up good human character, and about money—how money is used to buy […]

On April 14, Turkey broke ground on its first nuclear power plant, a controversial $20 billion project in Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast. Like Iran’s Bushehr plant, the only operational nuclear power reactor in the Middle East, the reactor at Akkuyu will be constructed by Russia. Moscow’s Middle Eastern sales drive doesn’t end there. It extends to recent nuclear cooperation agreements of varying degrees with Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. With little notice, Russia is on the verge of becoming the nuclear Wal-Mart of the Middle East. But if across the region Russian nuclear exports come with many advantages, […]

Forty years after its independence from Portugal and 13 years since the end of the civil war that immediately followed, Angola has made great progress in consolidating peace and stability, but continues to face many challenges. Foremost among them is managing an economic crisis, exacerbated by staggering inequality, while avoiding the potential social and political fallout it could generate. The country’s political landscape could also prove perilous: The ruling party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), faces both a determined opposition and a potential internal battle over who will succeed longtime President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The […]

On Wednesday, Ukrainian politician Oleh Kalashnikov was found dead with gunshot wounds in Kiev. The next day, the journalist and former politician Oles Buzyna was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his home in the capital. The two murders were just the latest in a string of deaths of leading Ukrainian opposition figures in recent months. Some of these may have been suicides, while others were clearly murders, but all of the dead were supporters of Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian client who was driven from power during the Maidan protests last year. Buzyna was an outspoken critic […]

In late March, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, became the first head of state from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to visit India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office last year. The visit came at a time when India is looking to renegotiate its long-term gas contracts with Qatar, given the opening up of other sources of supply around the world. Qatar is still India’s primary liquefied natural gas supplier and also hosts 600,000 Indian nationals, most of whom work as migrant laborers, which in recent years has led to India extending security guarantees to its […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement of $20 million in financing for private investment in Caribbean clean energy projects at a meeting yesterday with the region’s leaders in Kingston, Jamaica, comes at a good time: After a lost decade, during which easy access to cheap Venezuelan oil undermined incentives to seek alternative sources, the Caribbean now faces long-deferred decisions on how it sources and uses energy. The slump in global oil prices has hit Venezuela’s economy hard, threatening its Petrocaribe trade program, established by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2005 to sell subsidized oil and diesel to the group’s […]

This week, the United States found itself in a brief and unusual diplomatic spat with its normally quiet NATO ally, the Czech Republic. The U.S. ambassador in Prague, Andrew Schapiro, criticized Czech President Milos Zeman for saying he would attend the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. The mainly ceremonial president’s announcement infuriated not only the U.S., but many Czechs, including Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, since it came despite the European Union’s ongoing sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Today, Zeman changed course, announcing that he would not be […]

Two years after the death of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela finds itself mired in crisis. A drop in energy prices has devastated an already weak economy, while a crackdown on civil society has stifled the political opposition. This report draws on articles covering Venezuela from the outset of President Nicolas Maduro’s tenure. Subscribers can download a PDF copy using the download button in the toolbar above (you must be logged in to see the button). Non-subscribers can purchase a PDF copy for $5.99. Chavez’s Legacy In Post-Chavez Venezuela, a Dystopian Drama UnfoldsBy Frida GhitisNov. 21, 2013 Strategic Posture Review: VenezuelaBy David […]