Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos appointed Manuel Vicente as Minister for Economic Coordination on January 30, in a move which we believe gives some clarity over the country’s future leadership. In his new post, Vicente, the former CEO of state-owned oil giant Sonangol, is likely to have a wide range of policy-making powers and… [Read more]

As the first anniversary of the start of the Arab Spring passes by, attention is naturally focused on the political transitions in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and the quasi-civil war in Syria. Iraq hasn’t attracted too much attention of late, and even the United States’ withdrawal of its troops in December 2011 was a low-key… [Read more]

Regional Oil and Gas production has bounced back strongly over the last quarter in line with the rapid return of Libyan volumes. We expect full pre-war Libyan output to resume by the second half of 2012. Production is likely to continue growing as high oil prices drive further exploration and production across Africa. The key… [Read more]

In our December oil price outlook, we highlighted two factors that dominated the oil market during the course of 2011. Firstly, repeated production outages in the North Sea, West Africa and elsewhere, coupled with the Libyan civil war, resulted in serious supply tightness. Secondly, demand remained resilient despite a deteriorating macro-economic environment. We expect these… [Read more]

One of the biggest risks to the global economy at present is the possibility that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, in line with its recent threats. Around 20% of the world’s oil trade and 28% of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports pass through the waterway, and any disruption to this would cause oil… [Read more]

Myanmar (or Burma, as many still call it) has long been an economic laggard in Asia. Over the past few decades, virtually every other Asian state has boomed or emerged on investors’ radars in some way – but not Myanmar. The reason is, of course, Myanmar’s pariah status, economic isolationism, and chronic mismanagement. However, recent… [Read more]

The Nabucco pipeline project, which has long been backed by the EU to reduce the continent’s dependency on Russian gas, has been made redundant by the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline project. The latter is a joint venture (JV) between Azerbaijan’s state oil company Socar and Turkey’s Botas pipeline corporation, and their planned pipeline will carry natural… [Read more]