Day: May 17, 2022

In the two most recent U.S. presidential administrations, Central Asia has been caught up in Washington’s “strategic competition” with Beijing, experts say. And, they add, that under the presumption that Central Asians share Washington’s concerns, the United States, highlighting human rights violations in China’s western region of Xinjiang, has insisted the countries in the region reevaluate their relations with Beijing, underplaying the issues that drive policies in Central Asia and China. Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, head of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh, said Beijing’s interests…

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The European Union said companies can keep buying gas without breaching sanctions, as it softened its stance in a standoff with Moscow over energy supplies. The European Commission sent its revised guidelines to member states on Friday, a spokesperson said on Monday. In the updated recommendations, it said companies should make a clear statement that they consider their obligations fulfilled once they pay in euros or dollars. EU sanctions “do not prevent economic operators from opening a bank account in a designated bank for payments due under contracts for the…

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The discovery of another marine natural gas reservoir, announced May 9 by British natural gas company Energean, underscores Israel’s emerging status over the past decade as a regional power in the field of natural gas. The country is capable of providing not only for its own needs, but for the needs of its neighbors as well, and even for other countries around the world. The discovery in the Athena well led the company to go public about the near certainty that the Block 12 search zone contained nearly 60 billion…

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