Saudi Arabia has mixed expectations ahead of Donald Trump’s imminent second presidency. On the one hand, the royal family maintains close business relations with the president-elect and his entourage, which could lead to privileged access to the White House. On the other hand, Trump’s Middle...

The study aims to critically assess the safe-haven properties of Bitcoin and a diverse set of commodities in mitigating stock market risks during periods of extreme financial turbulence. Specifically, this research seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of these assets as hedging tools or...

The OPEC governments mainly financed their budgets by relying on oil production, similar to many other governments globally. However, the world’s ongoing economic development, changes in countries’ political relationships, and exchange of sanctions could have adverse consequences for...

The increasing instability within the global oil sector poses a challenge for contemporary companies to devise and implement effective financial stability strategies. The aim of this study is to analyse the financial stability strategies employed by oil companies, explore alternative approaches...

Our recent article on "The Road to Gaza" examined the history of the three supreme-God churches and the growing role of their militias in armed conflicts and wars around the world. The present paper situates these militia wars in the broader vista of the capitalist mode of power. Focusing...

Purpose The game strategies differ when different regions participate in the oil game. Under what circumstances will different participants choose cooperation or sanction strategies? This is the core issue of this paper. Design/methodology/approach Regarding the current and future game behavior...

In den vergangenen 10 Jahren haben die drei verbündeten Regierungen Ägyptens, Saudi-Arabiens und der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate (VAE) erheblichen Einfluss auf Entwicklungen im Nahen und Mittleren Osten genommen. Gemeinsames Ziel war es, demokratische Transformation zu verhindern, den...

The approved tax code amendments will cap a discount on Urals oil price to North Sea Dated for the calculation of oil taxes. By our estimates, amendments may bring an additional of around Rb640bn into the budget in 2023. However, the mechanism incorporated in the amendments entails the risk of a...

The 2023 war between Hamas and Israel elicits many different explanations. As with previous regional hostilities, here too, the pundits and commentators have numerous overlapping processes to draw on - from the struggle between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements, to the deep...

Crude oil is one of the sources by which budgets are financed in OPEC countries. However, the fall in oil prices in 2014 put their governments' finances under significant pressure. Healthcare was one of the sectors experiencing fiscal strain. This study examined the effect of a fall in oil...

Qatar's domestic and foreign policy since the 1990s has developed along three main lines: The emirate has expanded its gas production and supplies liquefied gas to as many countries as possible; it assures itself of US military protection by providing bases; and it conducts a "soft power"...

In den vergangenen 10 Jahren haben die drei verbündeten Regierungen Ägyptens, Saudi-Arabiens und der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate (VAE) erheblichen Einfluss auf Entwicklungen im Nahen und Mittleren Osten genommen. Gemeinsames Ziel war es, demokratische Transformation zu verhindern, den...

Oil Spaces traces petroleum's impact through a range of territories from across the world, showing how industrially drilled petroleum and its refined products have played a major role in transforming the built environment in ways that are often not visible or recognized. Over the past century...

In 2020 the energy transition path was distorted by the COVID-19 pandemic which caused a sharp economic decline and a fast global recovery in 2021. Unlike that period, the years between 2001 and 2019 illustrated a different type of energy evolution for developed and developing countries...

Purpose This paper aims to argue that the Global Political Economy (GPE) theory of neomercantilism provides a sound explanation to the American military involvement in the Persian Gulf. Accordingly, this paper also proposes the concept of "Neomercantilist War" which analyses the use of military...

With greater importance given to the climate change debate, energy has slowly attracted the complete attention of the whole world. The energy sector can be roughly divided into renewable energy, on the one hand, and fossil fuels, on the other. The former category is at the core of all the main...

Effectively, the government of Iraq, not the Iraqi people, owns the oil wealth; the oil industry is a government monopoly. We make the case against such monopoly and for a competitive oil industry. We estimate the share of oil in real output to be relatively large, and show that most...

Strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) plays an important role in ensuring energy security. China has launched the SPR in response to the potential oil shortage since 1970. The optimal scale of SPR has become a concern to policy makers. The paper adopts a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to...

Oil as the main source of economic and political power has played a significant role in oil governments’ political and social developments and has been one of the main pillars of power. But historical experiences have shown that having huge oil resources didn’t lead the countries to a...

The recent calls for the revival of the Oil Price Stabilization Fund (OPSF) are tantamount to a call for a policy reversal, that is, reversal of the downstream oil industry deregulation that began in 1998. The history of the OPSF presents important lessons for policymakers. Petroleum price...

We show that the share of oil in real output is relatively large, nearly 60 percent. Effectively, the government of Iraq– not the people – owns and manages the oil wealth. This dependence on oil as the main income is also consistent with the rentier economy and the Resource Curse phenomenon....

We examine how divesting from fossil fuel stocks, as announced by several large institutional investors, affects the systematic risk exposures of an equity portfolio. We find that fossil fuel stocks exhibit a highly significant positive exposure towards changes in the oil price. Consistent with...

Oil Spaces traces petroleum’s impact through a range of territories from across the world, showing how industrially drilled petroleum and its refined products have played a major role in transforming the built environment in ways that are often not visible or recognized. Over the past century...

This paper studies the historical importance of OPEC for oil price fluctuations. An event-study approach is used to identify the effects of OPEC announcements on oil price fluctuations. Results show that price volatility is higher than typical around OPEC meetings. Also, members' compliance, a...

The US set an oil export ban after the Iranian crisis in the 1970s due to energy security issues. Since US oil production has been continuously diminishing, there had not been many issues until recently. However, after the hydraulic fracturing technology was introduced to development of shale in...

This paper studies the historical importance of OPEC for oil price fluctuations. An event-study approach is used to identify the effects of OPEC announcements on oil price fluctuations. Results show that price volatility is higher than typical around OPEC meetings. Also, members' compliance, a...

We examine the predictive ability of economic policy uncertainty on stock returns of selected OPEC countries. In order to deal with certain statistical properties of the predictors, which include serial correlation, persistence, conditional heteroskedasticity, and endogeneity effects, wse...

This chapter surveys the literature on the political-economy of oil and gas governance by focusing on the exploration, production and revenue sharing in the hydrocarbon sector. Emphasis is placed on the extent to which oil and gas governance is shaped by geopolitics and interpartyparty politics....

On the management of revenues derived from petroleum resources (casually referred to as ‘oil money’), Nigeria and Norway present two extreme paradigms of prudence. On one of the extreme sides, the debate in Norway revolves around whether the state has saved and is saving too much in...