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Trump’s Russia threat rings hollow
The reaction to proposed sanctions on Russian oil buyers has been muted, suggesting trader fatigue with Trump’s frequent bold and erratic threats
Brazil looks to solve its energy security travails
Despite significant crude projections over the next five years, Latin America’s largest economy could be forced to start importing unless action is taken
Waiting for Arctic LNG 2
Without sanctions relief, there is little reason to believe the latest potential attempt at exports from the Russian liquefaction project will be more successful than the one last summer
US, Russia and China circle the Arctic
The strategic importance of vast untapped oil and gas reserves and key shipping routes has come in from the cold
Saudi Arabia and Russia pull OPEC+ in different directions
The two oil heavyweights’ diverging fiscal considerations are straining unity within the group
Is a Russia-Iran gas deal on the horizon?
Russia has ample spare gas, and Iran needs it, but sanctions and pricing pose steep hurdles.
Europe’s hard choices on gas security
EU half measures over storage regulation, geopolitical risks to ending Russian gas, power outage questions and China’s LNG resale leverage make for a challenging path ahead.
Saudi-US energy ties adapt to multipolar world
Saudi Arabia and US relations can construct a new ‘field of dreams’, but opportunism may be the new rules of the game
A new energy order in the UAE and Saudi Arabia
The two Gulf states are combining fossil fuel production with ambitions to become leaders in low-carbon energy
Letter from Saudi Arabia: Energy, diplomacy and the art of the deal
Saudi Arabia is growing as a geopolitical and diplomatic force amid an increasingly fractured world
Discoveries in frontier provinces like the Arctic are especially vulnerable to becoming stranded
Opinion
Arctic Russia Brazil Venezuela Saudi Arabia
Cleveland Jones
5 October 2021
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Giant oil and gas discoveries may prove irrelevant

The energy transition is increasing the risk of huge discoveries becoming stranded indefinitely

The size of large new oil and gas discoveries may not be enough to guarantee development and production. The window of opportunity for such discoveries may be over, not because their underlying resource base is insufficient, but because they may not be able to be produced before the twilight of the oil age renders them uneconomic. Under normal circumstances, when discoveries involving billion barrel of oil equivalent recoverable volumes are announced, the oil and gas industry sits up and takes notice. These could indicate the birth of a new world-class oil play. However, giant discoveries, such as the Pobeda field in the Russian Arctic and the recent Kara Sea discovery by Russian oil firm Ro

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24 July 2025
Trump energy policies and changing consumer trends to upend oil supply and demand

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