It is not breaking news that Iraq sits atop vast amounts of oil. The country has the fifth largest proven crude oil reserves globally with an estimated 140 billion barrels. (For comparison: Iran, fourth globally, has an estimated 150 billion barrels, and Kuwait, sixth globally, has about 104 billion barrels of proved reserves. Iraq […]
To the south, Iraqi Kurdistan sees an unstable Baghdad struggling to maintain control against a violent insurgency, all the while seeking to exert control over the Kurdish region’s vast oil wealth. It is to the west, though, where Kurds see a brighter future, eyeing the opportunity for independence through a pipeline to Turkey to sell […]
Canada may have the second largest oil reserves in the world, but the vast majority are locked up in Alberta’s oil sands, far from any ocean. That means that pipelines are needed to transport the oil west to ports on Canada’s Pacific Coast or south to markets in the United States. With President Barack Obama […]
The cold snap that has frozen most of Europe solid has created some tensions over Russia’s role as supplier of natural gas to its neighbors. On Friday, a Gazprom official claimed that Ukraine was taking more than its share from the pipeline that runs through its territory. For those who remember the unpleasantness between Moscow […]
The Keystone XL Pipeline extension proposed by TransCanada is current in planning limbo after the November 10 decision by the Obama administration not to make a decision on going ahead with or killing it. If and when built, it would bring crude from Alberta, Canada’s oils sands to the Gulf Coast of the US. The […]
Central Africa is not the first place energy people traditionally think of when it comes to oil. Now it appears Uganda may have up to 2 billion barrels of the stuff, according to their government. The question is what to do about it. Uganda would like to have a refinery, although some oil companies say this […]