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The foreign secretary has signalled the Bank of England will continue to withhold $4.8bn of Venezuelan gold being held in its vaults, despite the dramatic toppling of the country’s autocratic ruler potentially paving the way to the reserves being returned. Addressing lawmakers late on Monday, Yvette Cooper suggested the government would continue its refusal to recognise the new leadership in Caracas, acknowledging this would likely mean the Bank would continue to withhold the country’s reserves. Britain’s central bank has stored…
Will the electric utility distribution monopolies (”discos”) remain financially viable over the longer term? That is the question, and not an idle one. When the government broke up the Bell Systemm (some of you may remember that formerly ubiquitous entity) in the 1980s, it assumed (as did most investors) that the local exchange (the telephone equivalent of the disco) had an unassailable regulated monopoly. Technology (the internet and cell phones) changed that picture, and today only 30% of the population utilizes local exchange…
Singapore is a 277-square-mile thermodynamic miracle, or perhaps a financial one, depending on which ledger you prefer to read. I’ve spent enough time looking at industrial clusters to know that space is the ultimate friction point. In Singapore, that friction is becoming heat. Data from the IEA and regional market trackers reveals a country that has built an empire on "transformation"...taking raw inputs it doesn't own and turning them into high-value outputs the rest of the world craves. It refined 1.7 million terajoules of oil products…
For years, energy experts have predicted that natural gas will be the only fossil fuel that will see significant growth in its share in the global primary energy mix in the coming years, thanks to its role as a "bridge fuel" due to a lower emission profile compared with coal and oil as well as flexibility for grid stability, especially with increasing demand in Asia and as a backup for renewables. Natural gas is poised to reshape Africa’s future, offering transformative pathways for countries to earn export revenues and achieve domestic industrialization.…
Suriname’s government, in the capital Paramaribo, has been hungrily eyeing neighboring Guyana’s massive world-class oil boom since before the 2020 pandemic. Both impoverished South American nations of less than one million share the Guyana Suriname Basin. The offshore basin is delivering an oil boom that is exceeding all expectations, making Guyana, based on GDP per capita, one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Suriname, which is one of South America’s poorest countries and is experiencing a deep, long-running economic crisis,…
