News
The dramatic events over the weekend in Venezuela have renewed global attention on a country that, on paper, should be one of the world’s great energy powers. Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves on Earth, yet its oil industry has been in long-term decline for two decades. Understanding why requires looking past the headlines and into the technical, legal, and political decisions that steadily dismantled what was once a cornerstone of the global petroleum system. The United States confirmed that Venezuelan President Nicolás…
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…
The white hydrogen boom could be within sight based on recent finds in France, the United States, and other parts of the world. However, developers are still not sure of the costs involved with exploiting white hydrogen resources, as well as the technical challenges to accessing reserves, making the outlook uncertain. Unlike other low-carbon forms of hydrogen, such as blue and green hydrogen, white hydrogen is naturally occurring. The geologic hydrogen, often referred to as natural or white hydrogen, is produced naturally when underground…
