Matthew Smith is Oilprice.com's Latin-America correspondent. Matthew is a veteran investor and investment management professional. He obtained a Master of Law degree and is currently located in Latin America. Matthew writes on oil and gas, mining and infrastructure.
The war in Ukraine, the subsequent U.S., and UK ban on Russian oil imports, Europe’s energy crisis, and supply constraints all highlight the need to…
President Vladmir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine coupled with ever-stricter sanctions being imposed on Russia, existing supply constraints and growing post-pandemic saw crude oil prices…
President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Europe’s second-largest country Ukraine highlights the threat posed by rising authoritarianism in a post-pandemic world afflicted by supply shocks for…
An often overlooked and ignored aspect of Venezuela’s crisis is the considerable environmental degradation occurring at the hands of the OPEC member’s decrepit oil industry.…
For decades after the rise of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel, the violence-riven Latin American country of Colombia was long associated with being a…
A surprise jump in Venezuela’s crude oil output at the end of 2021 caught industry analysts by surprise. According to data provided by Caracas to…
The last two years, since the COVID-19 pandemic commenced, have been particularly tumultuous for the strife-torn Latin American nation of Colombia. The fallout from the…
The former British colony of Guyana, one of South America’s poorest nations, is undergoing a major economic transformation driven by a massive oil boom. ExxonMobil’s…
Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer, has long been an unknown when it comes to the OPEC+ production agreement which caps the petroleum output of…
Saudi Arabia’s six-year-long offensive in Yemen continues to generate considerable human suffering, fears over Middle East stability, and attention-grabbing headlines. The civil war is estimated…
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, populist leftism is again sweeping across Latin America. In August 2021 former school teacher and leftwing politician Pedro…
Despite decades of mismanagement, malfeasance and corruption, strict U.S. sanctions and crumbling energy infrastructure, Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA has stunned observers by reporting a…
Despite the groundbreaking 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and the largest guerilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Spanish initials)…
Latin America’s largest economy and oil producer Brazil has been hit hard by soaring inflation which along with rising political unrest is threatening its economic…
Fears of another coronavirus outbreak, lockdowns, and the emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa has caused the price of crude oil to plunge.…
Two decades of malfeasance and corruption coupled with sharply weaker crude oil prices and ever stricter U.S. sanctions have precipitated the worst modern economic collapse…
The deeply impoverished South American country of Suriname, which has been sharply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, is hoping to replicate the hydrocarbon success being…
The tiny South American nation of Guyana has emerged as the hottest offshore drilling location on the continent over the last six years. The swathe…
After a harsh 2020 where a combination of sharply weaker oil prices and the COVID-19 pandemic caused investment and production to plummet, questions are emerging…
At the start of 2021, Venezuela’s Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami announced that national oil company PDVSA was targeting petroleum production of 1.5 million barrels per…