Features / Political Review
Yet another round
Egypt will once again host the World Economic Forum this month, having managed to deliver a successful round in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2006. Saving the US Economy
It seems that the U.S economy is heading towards a long-standing recession. With the credit crunch crisis, growing problems in Iraq, decreasing value of the US dollar vis-à-vis other main currencies, rising oil prices which exceeded the $100 dollar mark for the first time in decades came to cap it all. And as oil prices have risen about 16% this year, and the oil producers’ cartel, OPEC, has declined to raise output, the American administration, as a result, felt at sea and began to move and hold talks with oil-producing countries. Cementing Iranian-Iraqi ties
The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Iraq last month was a mixture of business and politics. Widely described as historic, this visit was the first by an Iranian leader in 29 years, and it was meant to further cementing bilateral relations between the one-time warring countries From Gazprom to the Kremlin, business as usual
There has been a perplexing question that exercised the minds of many energy analysts after the election of Dmitry Medvedev, Gazprom's Chairman of the Board of Directors as Russia's president: will there be any change in its energy policies? The tragedy at the borders…
A human tragedy unfolded in the past weeks in the Palestinian Gaza Strip after Israel decided to cut fuel and electricity it used to provide for the densely populated area. These cuts, which are intended to pressure Palestinian armed groups to end their rocket attacks launched from Gaza against settlements in southern Israel, had a grave impact on Gaza’s hospitals, water-pumping stations, sewage-treatment facilities, and other infrastructure essential for the well-being of Gaza’s population. Chavez threatens to stop oil exports to US
It’s as if the US economy was needing yet another setback after the “credit crunch” and soaring oil prices that bordered on the $100 a barrel. Last month President Hugo Chávez launched into an angry tirade about stopping oil exports to the US if petroleum giant Exxon Mobil succeeds in freezing billions of dollars in foreign petroleum assets controlled by Venezuela. Will Russia lead the Natural Gas Cartel?
It seems that Russia is determined to come back as a key player in the international arena. To achieve this goal, the Russian government has been trying to expand its influence on Europe by tightening its grip on energy sources of the old continent. Indeed the Russian government succeeded at last to sign a landmark agreement with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan two months ago, by virtue of which the main pipeline connecting natural gas from those two countries to Europe will pass through the Russian territories. Bhutto’s assassination is not the only reason
There is never a dull moment in the Middle East. And hence the prices of crude oil, produced mainly from this ever turbulent region, are always hanging in the balance. And as one oil trading expert put it, everybody wants calm when they are talking about pricing energy. But, calm is a missing word in the Middle East lexicon. 
