Resources Archive

Earlier this month, Royal Dutch Shell and Spain’s Repsol pulled out of a proposed Iranian natural gas development project that was estimated to be worth over $10 billion. The decision by the two European energy firms to pull out of phase 13 of the South Pars project was seen as a setback for Iran’s efforts to court foreign interest in its energy sector at a time when the Bush administration is actively trying to discourage it. Shell and Repsol executives did not publicly comment on their reasons for pulling out of South Pars. But whether it was due to concerns […]

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov traveled to the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol May 10-11 to mark the 225th anniversary of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. During that weekend, he made several inflammatory comments to the effect that the port and city still legally belong to the Russian Federation. Luzhkov’s remarks have further strained relations between Russia and Ukraine, which also differ on other issues, especially Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO. The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) responded by designating the Moscow mayor persona non grata. The SBU claimed that Luzhkov ignored “a warning regarding the unacceptability of actions harming Ukraine’s national interests […]

HONG KONG — Soaring world rice prices are finally showing real signs of abating, easing worst-case fears that inflation-fueled food shortages could lead to widespread starvation and social unrest. A bumper crop in Pakistan, an improved harvest in Thailand and a boost in exports from Japan resulted in a 14 percent drop in the price of rice over the last five trading days, its biggest fall since July 2004. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), rice prices skyrocketed by 76 percent between December 2007 and April. However, traders said a decision by Islamabad to export 1 million […]

In a recent announcement that went virtually unnoticed in the Western media, an official of Saudi Aramco — Saudi Arabia’s national oil company — stated that Saudi Arabia aims to double its oil exports to China from last year’s levels, reaching 1 million barrels per day by 2010. Should this goal be realized, China will soon rival the United States and Japan as one of the top destinations for Saudi petroleum. In addition, the China National Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) already has an agreement with Iran to buy 250 million tons of liquid natural gas from the country over 30 years, […]

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a curious export phenomenon occurred in the countries of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. In spite of the fact that none of these countries had major domestic mining operations, their exports of copper, gold, diamonds and coltan jumped drastically. Not coincidentally, these were the exact same minerals found in abundance in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the jump in mineral exports coincided perfectly with the invasion of DRC by these three countries. While each country justified its invasion based on security concerns, the United Nations found that the battlefields were […]

In March, India’s Tata Group made headlines with its $2.3 billion acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) from Ford, the latest in a series of high-profile mergers and acquisitions in which well-known Western brands such as IBM, Barclays Bank, Tetley Tea and Corus steel have been bought, in part or entirely, by multinational corporations from developing economies. Those with a longer historical view might recall that it was private business — the British East India Company — that imposed imperial control over the “brightest jewel in the empire,” before crown rule was implemented in 1858. With Tata scooping up […]