This brief on the Trump administration's approach to the battle against ISIS is the first of a three-part series on America's foreign policy in the Middle East. Subsequent reports will examine U.S. policy in Syria and the intensified competition between Iran and traditional U.S. partners in the region, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The list of 13 demands presented in June 2017 by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates suggests a supremely ambitious set of goals behind their embargo of Qatar, including “red lines” that touch directly upon Qatari sovereignty and that Doha will almost certainly reject. The stage is thus set for a contest of endurance, one that with every passing month looks more likely to result in favor of Qatar, writes fellow Gabriel Collins in this brief.
To either close deals or resolve disputes, parties and courts must be able to attach a credible economic value to water that may still be underground in the aquifer. In this brief, fellow Gabriel Collins proposes a means of estimating this value that opens the door for a direct comparison of the implied price paid for groundwater in a land purchase transaction and the price paid for an explicit agreement to acquire only the groundwater estate beneath a tract.
This issue brief examines how produced water recycling in Texas oilfields threatens landowners’ ability to earn revenue from selling frac water and disposal services, a more lucrative revenue stream compared to raising cattle.
As China’s demand for light oil products continues to drive incremental consumption growth, it is becoming apparent that commodities framed as “oil products” are increasingly not actually made from crude oil. Fellow Gabriel Collins explores the possible ramifications of this situation in this issue brief. He writes that oil producers — whether in Riyadh, Moscow or the Permian Basin — should take stock of how China’s growing use of “oil products” that do not actually come from crude oil may translate into effective reductions in demand and prices for the crude oil they produce.
This brief quantifies the potential exposure of key European countries to Russian gas price and supply manipulation, shows how Moscow has used energy as an instrument of coercive diplomacy since the early 1990s, and briefly assesses the impacts and future policy implications of Russian entities’ past use of the “energy weapon” in and near Europe.
Although it has not been widely successful to date in the former Soviet zone, Russia's use of the energy weapon against Western European countries in various forms still constitutes a strategic threat that warrants close attention from policymakers in Washington and throughout Europe, writes fellow Gabriel Collins.
The landscape is changing for foreign direct investment in Latin America. Investments flow not only from north to south, but also from south to south and south to north. What's more, relatively small firms in developing countries are becoming as likely as multinationals to invest abroad.
To gain public support for Mexico’s energy reforms, the government promised a future of low gas prices. The author documents the fallout when gas prices instead shot up 20 percent.
The extent of fuel theft from pipelines in Mexico is now so great that it is becoming a serious financial burden for state-owned petroleum company Pemex and, more broadly, may pose a challenge to the implementation of policies designed to liberalize Mexico's gasoline market, writes postdoctoral fellow Adrian Duhalt.
A universally agreed-upon definition of the U.S.-Mexico border region is elusive, to say the least. The boundaries vary widely depending on the government entity or academic institution involved. This brief reviews the many officially sanctioned definitions of the region, and explains why a consensus is necessary for effective border management.