Category: Highlights

The world’s seven-largest industrialized economies have floated the idea of a price cap on Russian oil to further squeeze the Kremlin’s ability to fund its onslaught in Ukraine and try to protect consumers amid surging energy prices. The G-7′s pursuit of a price ceiling on Russian oil is not without its challenges, however, with energy analysts highly skeptical about the integrity of the proposal. For its part, the Kremlin has warned any attempt to impose a price cap on Russian oil will cause more harm than good. How the idea…

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Policy makers are often keen to glance at old documents; these archives help them identify two major indicators of progress and bottlenecks. A glance at a published USAID report of 1982 states: “Although Pakistani exports have increased over the years, the country continues to suffer from chronic trade deficits, and it remains heavily dependent on imported petroleum products.” In 2022, this is grim reading for policy enthusiasts– no progress. Nothing seems to have changed except for the year. Considering this predicament, the recent Russian-fueled war in Ukraine has come at…

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The world’s largest crude oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, continues to keep close ties with Russia while the top oil consumer, the United States, pleads with major producers—including the Kingdom—to boost supply to the market and help ease consumers’ pain at the pump. While the U.S. and its Western allies are sanctioning Moscow and banning oil imports from Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden is also turning to Saudi Arabia to ask it to pump more oil as Americans pay on average $5 a gallon for gasoline. The Saudis prefer to keep…

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OPEC’s crude oil production fell in June compared to May, due to outages in Libya and Nigeria, and the 10 cartel producers bound by the OPEC+ pact lifted their combined production by just 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) last month, the monthly Reuters survey showed on Friday. OPEC’s all 13 members—including Libya, Iran, and Venezuela that are exempted from the pact—saw their collective production drop by 100,000 bpd month over month in June, to 28.52 million bpd, according to the survey. Under the OPEC+ pact, OPEC-10 targeted to increase its production in…

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Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared force majeure on crude exports from its oil terminals amid continued blockades of production and ports, which have severely crippled Libya’s oil exports. The force majeure comes after weeks of protests and closures amid the new rift in Libya’s political class over who should be governing the country. The most recent rivalry is between Fathi Bashaga, the Prime Minister appointed by the parliament earlier this year, and Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who was appointed last year through a process backed by the United…

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