Premium Article Archive

• IEA Recognizes Potential of Renewable Energy Sector

  For many investors, renewable energy remains a somewhat forbidding topic.What seems to be the best sure-fire bet? Solar? Wind? Geothermal? Tidal? Biomass?Now the redoubtable International Energy Agency is to publish in July an invaluable guidebook for the perplexed, “Deploying Renewables -- Best and Future Policy Practice,” 182 pages, ISBN 978-92-64-12490-5, paper €100, PDF €80 (2011)According to the IEA’s bookshop, “Growth is focused on a few of the available technologies, and rapid deployment is confined to a relatively small number of countries. In more advanced markets, managing support costs and system integration of large shares of renewable energy in a time…

• Have MIT Researchers Cracked Renewable Energy Bottleneck?

  Amidst soaring oil prices, renewable energy advocates have two eyes of the needle to pass through. The first is that their kilowatt hour of electricity production is currently higher than energy generated from more traditional fossil fuel sources, such as coal and hydrocarbons. The second is a technological bottleneck – how to store the energy generated by wind and solar power, which depend on natural processes that are best inconsistent. The wind doesn’t blow 24/7 and the sun goes down. Accordingly, storage issues of electricity generated during the peak periods of optimum natural production are the second issue of renewable…

• Renewable Energy Investors Should Consider - Romania

  The European Union has been hammered by the global recession that began in 2008. The recession has bit particularly hard into the EU’s newest members, the Central and Eastern European nations that were either under soviet hegemony or worse, part of the Evil Empire (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.) So, where are investors to make a euro in such uncertainty? Well, for astute investors looking at renewable energy in the EU, one of the hottest bets right now is – Romania. Yes, THAT Romania, beloved of Hollywood for Dracula films, more recently for being the film site for “Borat.” On 28…

• Amid Rising Global Interest in Renewable Energy, Tidal Power to Surge?

  Amid rising global concerns following Japan’s disastrous 11 March 2011 nuclear catastrophe at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daichi nuclear complex and surging oil prices, renewable energy is receiving increased attention from investors. The leading candidates are solar and wind energy, but both have problems beyond significant investment costs and the fact that they have yet to generate power at competitive rates with more traditional power sources such as oil, coal and natural gas. Beyond issues of power storage, a further concern is the fickle nature of their sources – the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind is hardly a constant factor.…

• Kazakhstan - One of the Safest Former Soviet Republics for Investment

  When the USSR collapsed in December 1991, the emerging fifteen new nations scrambled amidst hyperinflation to restructure their economies away from a centrally planned economy directed by Moscow to sovereign, free market ones that could attract desperately needed foreign direct investment (FDI). The clear winners in this have been two Caspian nations, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. While Azerbaijan might have won the initial PR investment race, knowledgeable investors are also closely eying Kazakhstan. Azeri President Heydar Aliyev, realizing that his nation’s indigenous resources were insufficient to develop the country’s hydrocarbon riches, in September 1994 signed the $7.4 billion “deal of the…

• Burma - Truly One of the Last Untapped Energy Frontiers, Opening for Business

  Investors, looking for sure bets, can stop reading right now.For those seeking overlooked energy "final frontiers," well, there’s now – Burma.According to the secretary of Burma's largest business federation, the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), Myo Thet, he has been meeting with companies "every day for a year" even though "there is still rather low interest from the West. There have been some bank owners from the west and also Australia but it’s still low compared to Asian countries. We wish to see more (investment) not only from the East but also the West...…

• Oil Rich Azerbaijan Looking for Investors

  The prosperity of former republics of the USSR, which collapsed in December 1991, has primarily been driven by the development of energy resources in the post-Soviet era, notably around the Caspian. Out of the debris of the Soviet Union have arisen four petro-states ringing the Caspian – the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.  The possibilities there have focused the attention of investors for the last twenty years. More than a decade ago Vice President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton CEO, remarked, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant…

• The Global Hunt For Oil: Canadian Firm Drills First Exploration Well in Somalia

  Energy companies are renowned for taking risks as they scour the globe for new opportunities.That said however, Canada’s Vancouver, BC-based Horn Petroleum Corporation, a unit of Africa Oil Inc., is in a class by itself, having begun drilling operations in Somalia’s semi-autonomous northern Puntland state.Somalia?Which has not had an effective government since 1991?Land of “Black Hawk Down,” pirates, battling militias, al Shabaab militants and U.S. drone strikes against the extremist group?Yep.On 17 January the company said in a press release that it is "pleased to announce the spudding (drilling) of the Shabeel-1 well on the Dharoor Block in Puntland, Somalia...…

• Out of Africa - Portugal solicits Angolan investment

  The following is an interesting and cautionary tale for investors looking at relatively "stable" Old Europe and Africa, seemingly mired in perennial crisis. Since last year the Portuguese government has been heavily lobbying its former colony Angola to invest its petrodollars there as the nation struggles to comply with the terms of a $99 billion financial rescue package. For 500 years, Angola was Portugal's biggest and richest African colony, with huge reserves of oil, gas and diamonds. The event marks something unique in world history since Columbus first set sail, ushering in centuries of European colonial domination - reverse colonization…

• China Casts Increasingly Large Investment Shadow Over Southeast Asian Neighbors

  Thinking of opening a textile mill in Kampuchea? A shrimp farm in Vietnam? Anything at all in Laos or Myanmar? Then think fast and act, as China is increasingly dominating is Southeast Asian neighbors' economies. Doubting Thomases should have a look at the document released last month by China's National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Science and Technology. Blandly entitled, "Country Report on China' s Participation in Greater Mekong Subregion Cooperation I," the study delineates in detail Beijing's interest in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) nations of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand,…