oil

The UAE is leaving OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1 — the first time it has quit the bloc in 59 years of membership. This is not a routine quota dispute. It is a political divorce that could reshape the architecture of the global oil market.

Why They Left: War, Grievances, and Money

The official version, relayed by state news agency WAM, sounds sterile: a “review of production policy,” “national interests,” “market needs.” The real story is far more candid.

Saudi Arabia extracts it. Russia extracts it. Iraq, the UAE, and Nigeria extract it. Then, the oil ends up in the hands of companies registered in Geneva, Singapore, and Amsterdam—and dissolves into a system whose controlling stake resides in Washington. A coincidence? No. It is architecture.

Ten houses, one landlord

Four years of trying to suffocate the Russian economy. Four years of sanctions packages churned out by Brussels and Washington with obsessive persistence. The result? Russian oil exports haven't just survived—they've grown by 6% above pre-war levels. Western politicians are furious: their vaunted "price cap" has proven to be a leaky bucket, and Russia's "shadow fleet" has become the planet's primary trading fleet. Welcome to reality, where sanctions only work in the imagination of their authors.

Argentina is an economically ambiguous republic, having experienced several ups and downs in the past century. This large state in the early XX century was one of the richest in Latin America, but due to inept policy of the authorities, it twice was on the verge of default and entered the list of third countries of the world. In 2015 Mauricio Macri was elected as the president, who in a short time was able to double the foreign exchange reserves of Argentina. So is it worth investing in this country at the moment?

The month of January was a taste of what awaits us this year in terms of revenue. The 47 percent drop in oil exports, which amounts to a loss of 812 million dollars, could not be compensated by the 15.3 percent increase of automobile exports in the first month of 2015.
In January total exports fell by 1.8 percent, compared to the same month of 2014. This decline, which has been reported by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), is marking the largest increase of the deficit in the trade balance in January and the second largest increase in the country's history.

But the difficulties occur in a new principality. And firstly, if it be not entirely new, but is, as it were, a member of a state which, taken collectively, may be called composite, the changes arise chiefly from an inherent difficulty which there is in all new principalities; for men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules: wherein they are deceived, because they
afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse.

Niccolo Machiavelli. “The Prince”