10-01 The Issues
Know anyone who has honeymooned in Turkmenistan? Or holidayed in Uzbekistan? How about Tajikistan and Azerbaijan? No? Well they don’t need your tourist dollars. They are all sitting on monster oil and gas reserves. It’s the area of Central Asia around the Crimean Sea that the world is watching in terms of oil conflicts. The…
10-02 Russia
The tension between Russia and the West can be traced to the seizure of Crimea on the Black Sea from Ukraine in 2014. For the world it was naked aggression, and a return to the Cold War.I saw it differently having travelled to Russia in 1987 and having spent two day in neighbouring Odessa. Our…
10-03 LNG
In 1960, in Kitchener Ontario, there were 20 fuel oil distributors supplying heat to homes and industry in the area. And ten years later there were three. What happened was natural gas. Not conflict but tension.And why? Well natural gas is to fuel oil what the electric car is to the gasoline driven automobile. An…
10-04 The Netherlands
Our visit to Amsterdam in 1984 to attend the International Small Business Congress was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.The Dutch love Canadians and in 1984 there was a generation that still remembered the Canadian liberation of their nation in 1945 and Canadians dropping food by air when the people were being…
10-05 Nigeria
We spent the day wandering around Disneyland. It was 1978, a day after the 5th International Symposium on Small Business held in Anaheim, California. My colleague was a professor of economics from the University of Lagos in Nigeria. The first thing I learned was that my friend was an economic consultant to the opposition party…
10-06 Cobalt
“THERE IS AN ERROR IN MELLOR.” That was the announcement ahead of every chemistry class in third-year engineering. A clever move by the professor to gain attention. He was referring to our textbook, “Mellor’s Inorganic Chemistry”. And, it was my introduction to Cobalt, which he referred to as a strategic element that was critical to…
10-07 Lithium
If we can get our heads around the concept of half of the world’s automobiles being electric by say 2050, then we can also comprehend that critical ingredients in lithium-Ion batteries will become sources of conflict.And even today, China and the US are involved in sewing up sources of lithium. China, especially, is active in…
10-08 The Arctic
If there is one simple way to describe future conflicts in the Arctic, it would be “less ice and more traffic”. Climate change is warming the Arctic at twice the rate as the rest of the world. And this means new transportation routes and the exploitation of oil and gas, minerals, jewels and fish stocks….
10-09 Hormuz
The Strait of Hurmuz is referred to as a shipping “choke point” where 20% of the world’s crude oil supply must pass. It is a narrow passageway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that is only 21 miles across. So, if there is any part of the world that is a potential…