A burgeoning Middle Eastern conflict is putting the world’s energy security under threat. After Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, was hit by drones, the global supplies were bound to be disrupted and prices to skyrocket. The conflict has many ambiguous and cascading effects that are yet to be explained.
For the past few years, China has been garnering great power potential which is reflected in its assertive foreign policies. China’s persistence on dominating the South China Sea (SCS) has resulted in territorial disputes with its neighboring countries and has become a threat to both regional and global energy security. These ongoing disagreements have become “a focal point for big power rivalry”, and their repercussions stretch beyond the region.
Within the past few years, the context of geopolitics in the Eastern Mediterranean region has drastically changed. Is there a hidden agenda behind the fundamentals of this newly formed gas market? Or is it just the simple truth that peripheral power prevails when consolidated?
Since 2016, Brexit negotiations started when the United Kingdom (UK) voted for separation from the European Union (EU) in a landmark referendum, where 51.9% voted to leave the EU against 48.1% voted to remain in the EU. On March 2017, Article 50 of the European Union’s Treaty was implemented and negotiations between UK and EU started to take place in April 2017. It was announced that England's separation from the EU would be in March 2019, two years after the start of the exit process. However, due to the inability to reach a deal, the time of the Brexit was postponed to April 12 then postponed again to October 31. During the mentioned period, Theresa May resigned last June. Accordingly, the future can be summed up in five different scenarios.
As government finances of all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states continue to deteriorate due to low global oil prices, finding a new source of income for the government that is unrelated to oil has become vital. Hence the introduction of a 5% value added tax (VAT), the region’s first ever tax levied on products and services.
Cairo – Decypha: In an attempt to prop up the oil prices, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), along with 11 non-members, decided in November 2016 cut oil production as they battle a global glut of crude to push oil above $50 a barrel in 2017.
In the global chess game of energy, international relations tend to have the first hand. When looking into the power of the Eastern Mediterranean region, one cannot side-step the central role of Cyprus. In an effort to steer away from Egypt’s angle of the equation, Egypt Oil & Gas conducted an interview with Nicholas Papadopoulos, the Presidential candidate of Cyprus and the Head of the country’s Democratic Party.
Fluctuating global oil prices for the past three years have continually hurt both government and private sector oil investors. The near halving of oil prices overnight since mid-2014 came six months after the US lifted economic sanctions placed on Iran since 2011.
