China’s Long-Term Strategy vs The West’s Civil War and Short-Termism While the effectively bankrupt West is tearing itself apart and undermining its society, economy and science, China is not just getting on with it, but forging ahead. A good starting point in understanding what is happening now, with all the…
Read MoreLess than a month after the hysteria and sheer bad thinking levelled at the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, some sanity and common sense have returned to some of the climate change community. As we wrote at the time, if…
Read MoreMuch hot air has been expended since President Trump announced on 1 June 2017 that the USA would withdraw from the December 2015 Paris accord. As is often the case, Trump is at least partially right, but in the welter of hype and hysteria, it is easy to overlook the…
Read MoreIan Pryde takes part as Expert Speaker on Yukos Case Round Table at the Energy Arbitration Conference: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Decade: Lessons from Recent Awards The conference is being organised by the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), University of Dundee. Principal sponsors…
Read MoreI noted in my last blog that Russia had imprisoned hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and that it finally needed to start trusting its own people. And lo! President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday June 21, 2013, included an admission that under current laws, many would not be in jail at all, talk about…
Read MoreOn June 18, 2013, President Putin warned that government revenues would be less than previously expected and that the budget policy for 2014-2016 had to be planned accordingly. He also said that while revenues from natural resources were decreasing, financing from other industries was so far limited. In its annual review of the Russian economy, the International Monetary Fund has just…
Read MoreMost observers agree that after making generous promises during the presidential election campaign, Vladimir Putin has finally realized that Gazprom is no longer the state’s cash cow. In October, he warned that the development of shale gas “could seriously restructure the global market for hydrocarbons,” although experts argued it was a…
Read MoreMost observers rightly argue that not only have the go-go years ended, but that Russia’s economy also faces major threats going forward. One scenario, based on low oil prices combined with greatly increased state spending, envisions the development of a twin deficit on the federal budget and current account as…
Read MoreAs more and more countries explore the possibility of shale gas, Russia’s reliance on energy exports for future economic growth looks more and more fragile. As rising political risk spooks investors in Russia following the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections, recent developments in other countries and continents show that the country’s…
Read MoreThe inauguration of the long-anticipated Nord Stream pipeline gave both Russia and EU representatives the opportunity to say nice things about the other – but the actions behind the words are what counts. On Nov. 7, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was in Germany to take part in the official inauguration…
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