Geopolitics : News and discussion

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/9fEKb

The Iran war has brought US oil and gas dealmaking to a standstill after a strong start to the year as volatile crude prices make it difficult to price transactions.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, rose 0.9 per cent to $113.24 a barrel at the open of trade in the Asian morning on Monday. West Texas intermediate, the US benchmark, climbed 2.1 per cent to $100.29 a barrel.

US oil and gas dealmaking year to date has reached $45bn, its highest in two years, according to Dealogic data, as a result of the merger between two Permian Basin players Devon Energy and Coterra Energy.

But oil and gas talks had slowed or been put on hold as companies waited for markets to calm and crude prices to settle, several bankers and lawyers working on US deals said.

“Everything has just shut down,” said Bryan Loocke, partner at law firm Vinson & Elkins specialising in oil and gas M&A. “I’ve got a couple of deals going, they are longer-term contracts, but everything is in paralysis right now because no one can price anything.”

The predicament has come ahead of CERAWeek in Houston, traditionally the industry’s busiest dealmaking event. The conference was going to be “very different this year”, said one London-based senior energy banker.

“I have three or four disposal processes running and we have put them all on hold,” he said. “There is no point in taking bids, they will be all over the place.”

Following the pandemic, oil and gas companies cleaned up their balance sheets, focusing on efficiency and shareholder returns and leading to a wave of dealmaking.

Industry veterans were predicting another busy year in 2026 as a result of further consolidation in the shale patch, rising international demand for US gas, particularly from companies in Asia, and increased energy demand from the AI build-out.

Under the Trump administration, oil and gas deals have been subject to less scrutiny than during Biden’s tenure, when deals were interrogated by the Federal Trade Commission. Companies may be looking to close deals before the end of Trump’s term in order to take advantage of the permissive environment, said one banker.

“I think volatility is usually bad, but this feels like a bit of a different market,” said Conrad Gibbins, co-head of upstream, Americas at US investment bank Jefferies in Houston.

The rise of asset-backed securities transactions in the oil and gas sector, an alternative to traditional lending based on resource reserves, has also led to increased activity.

“The development of the ABS market has fundamentally changed cost of capital for buyers, bringing access to the investment grade debt markets to a wide range of buyers,” said Gibbins. “More broadly, scarcity of higher quality assets of scale is also driving fierce competition for assets in today’s market.”

https://archive.ph/3hlyZ

Top 5 Marxoid CIA talk show guest, she's right, no this war is not caused by Netanyahuism or whatever the fuck Bernie Sanders and Tucker Carlson tell you, people are going to blame Israel for the invasion of Vietnam at this rate. Worship of US military capabilities is widespread on the US left, while simultaneously imagining some kind of libertarian gun movement fused with the DSA will make up for a lack of militancy in preparation for the collapse. Look abroad to look within, it's where the stuff comes from now

https://radicaldesai.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-capitalist-west

Dear Friends,

Apologies for a rather short post. Have had a rather long day but had to put this out. Pascal Lottaz invited me on to his excellent channel and presented me with his usual very thoughtful questions, all aimed at understanding the current war on Iran in its longer historical context.

Please watch the full video here and see Pascal’s useful description below.

The illegal attack on Iran—as many illegal wars before—is not a bug but a system feature. One, however, that is doomed to self-destruct its host. It is the inevitable outcome of the rent-seeking and society corrupting logic of the capitalist system the West is built around. The expansionary and often genocidal logic embedded in the core of the US empire drives entire classes within the West toward the ruthless application of force. But in a multipolar world this approach finds its ultimate—and eventually tragic—end. Today I'm discussing the Iran war with Professor Radhika Desai (‪@RadDesai‬) from Manitoba University. One of the world's leading Political Geoconomists, Professor Desai explains the system inherent aspects of the war.

if you read this far IOU an explanation of what's wrong with Michael Hudson et al, I feel Redsails' take on his stuff is unnecessarily rushed

It's mid, but what can you expect under these circumstances?

Nguyet also highlighted that the country is strengthening cooperation with South America, notably through the launch of negotiations in December last year on a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). Vietnam hopes to conclude the agreement soon to boost trade and investment with member states such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

According to the diplomat, Vietnam and Argentina have nearly completed negotiations on a double taxation avoidance agreement and expect to sign it in 2026, which would facilitate business activities in both countries. The two sides are also expanding cooperation into new areas, including satellite technology and telecommunications, with promising initial progress, notably Argentine firms’ import of fibre-optic equipment manufactured by Viettel Group of Vietnam. Bilateral trade turnover currently stands at nearly 3.5 billion USD annually.

Beyond traditional areas of cooperation, Vietnam is keen to broaden collaboration with Argentina in high technology, renewable energy, biotechnology, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, while working towards establishing a strategic partnership in agro-industry, she said.

In the long run Vietnamese and Chinese telecoms are going to get rid of stuff like Starlink.

1.4 billion people will never give in to their jobs: China tightens fertilizer exports Sina Finance

Sina Finance

2026-03-19 10:54

·Hebei *Creator in the field of high-quality finance and economics 0 Source: Market information (Source: Steel VS Observation) Open Netease News to view wonderful pictures

Now is the critical time for spring plowing and preparing for plowing. The crops in the fields are waiting for fertilizer, and the rice bowls of 1.4 billion people are tied to this stubble of sowing.

Recently, China has introduced a strict control policy for fertilizer exports, tightened the outflow of fertilizer through export quotas and license management, prioritized the domestic fertilizer demand for 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land, and steadily guarded the bottom line of food security for 1.4 billion people.

The latest data released by the General Administration of Customs of China in March 2026 show that: from January to February 2026, China exported a total of 327,000 tons of urea, down 68.2% year-on-year; exported 214,000 tons of diammonium phosphate, the core phosphate fertilizer variety, down 72.5% year-on-year, and the export volume of the main fertilizer variety fell by more than 70% year-on-year. The intensity of policy tightening is far beyond market expectations.

As soon as this news came out, the most restless country in the global food market was not the small Middle Eastern country that relied on food imports, but India, which has the world's largest arable land area and is known as the “world's largest rice export country.”Recently, India has repeatedly issued emergency procurement inquiries to China through official channels, hoping that China will relax export restrictions and supply it with at least 3 million tons of urea to solve the urgent need for spring plowing.

Many people will be curious: India has more arable land than us, and the agricultural population exceeds 400 million. How can it be stumped by fertilizer?The answer is actually hidden in its seemingly powerful agricultural system-the fragile lifeblood that is completely based on “imported fertilizers to grow food.”

1. You may not think that the food lifeblood of India, a large agricultural country, is supported by imported fertilizers. Many people have a misunderstanding: India's cultivated land area is 180 million hectares, which is half more than our 120 million hectares. Grain exports rank in the top three in the world all year round. How can there be a shortage of fertilizer? But the truth is that India is not only one of the world's largest grain exporters, but also the world's largest importer of fertilizer.None of the three major fertilizers necessary for the growth of staple foods, rice and wheat, can be independently controlled in India.

2. The three main fertilizers are fully dependent on imports, and China is the core supplier

Public data from the Rural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs show that the three main fertilizers, urea, phosphate fertilizer and potash fertilizer, have a comprehensive contribution rate of more than 60% to the production of staple foods such as rice and wheat.Simply put, whether the crops grow well or not, and whether the yield is high or not, all depend on these three fertilizers to support the bottom.

And these three key fertilizers, India's external dependence, have all reached the cordon.：

-Urea (staple food and core fertilizer): India's annual urea consumption is about 36 million tons, and its domestic production capacity is only 27 million tons. There is an annual production gap of nearly 9 million tons. 25% of urea is completely dependent on imports. It has been ranked as the world's largest importer of urea for 5 consecutive years.According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Fertilizer of India and the General Administration of Customs of China, from April 2025 to February 2026 (India's fiscal year 2025-2026), India imported a total of 7.45 million tons of urea, of which 2.124 million tons were imported from China, accounting for 28.5% of its total imports. China is India's second largest source of urea imports, second only to oil-producing countries in the Middle East.

-Phosphate fertilizer (core fertilizer for anti-reverse production increase): Import dependence exceeds 45%. In the first 11 months of the 2025-2026 fiscal year, India imported 5.8 million tons of diammonium phosphate, of which 3.52 million tons were imported from China, accounting for 60.7%. China is the absolute core supplier of phosphate fertilizer in India. -Potash fertilizer (strong seed anti-inversion core fertilizer): India has almost no recoverable potash resources, and its import dependence is as high as 92%. It relies entirely on imports to fill the gap. Any fluctuation in the global potash fertilizer trade will directly affect India's agricultural production.

2. Without imported fertilizers, India's basic food supply cannot be supported.

Global agricultural data released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2025 show that the average yield of rice in India is only 239 kg/mu, less than half of China's 472 kg/mu; the yield of wheat is 223 kg/mu, which is only 57% of China's 390 kg/mu.

One of the core reasons for the yield gap is insufficient fertilizer application and unstable supply.The Indian agricultural sector has calculated that for every 1 kg reduction in urea application, rice production per acre will drop by 4-5 kg; once fertilizer imports are cut off, no matter how much arable land and how many farmers there are, India's food production will directly decline sharply.

3. Hundreds of billions of subsidies can't hit the main production capacity, and the finances are already overwhelmed. Some people may ask, since fertilizer is so important, why doesn't India build its own factory?In fact, it's not that I don't want to, it's really difficult.

In order to maintain agricultural stability, India spends a lot of financial funds on fertilizer subsidies every year, but it has never been able to build an independent and controllable local production capacity.The latest announcement of the Ministry of Finance of India in March 2026 shows that India's fertilizer subsidy budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year is as high as 10.2 trillion rupees (about 120 billion US dollars), accounting for 12% of the country's fiscal expenditure; as of February 2026, a total of 11.7 trillion rupees of subsidy funds have been allocated, which is 14.7% overspend on the annual budget.If natural gas prices continue to rise, the annual subsidy overspend will exceed 30%, and the finances have been dragged to the verge of being overwhelmed by fertilizer subsidies.

Second, the four-fold pressure is superimposed, India's spring plowing really can't afford to wait

This time China tightened fertilizer exports, the reason why India is so anxious is because it just hit India's four key pressure thresholds-it can't afford to make a mistake, and it can't wait for a day.

Ms. Hien stated that sufficient supply will be ensured in March. In April, the supply will also be basically guaranteed, but to be absolutely certain, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will continue to implement various measures, including seeking and expanding sources of supply to purchase gasoline and diesel.

Mr. Hoang Trung Dung, General Director of the Petroleum Additives and Products Development Joint Stock Company (APP), said that domestic businesses currently have many oil import markets outside the Middle East such as Singapore, South Korea, Russia, China… “ Businesses will import wherever they find it suitable; that is the right of each business. When importing from the Middle East becomes difficult, businesses will certainly have a plan to shift direction ,” Mr. Dung said.

I think for western (post-)student activist types, the idea of a psyop is limited mostly to "messaging I disagree with", with no thought even given to "is this just to incite me, why?", so stories about Vietnam being about to collapse have been swallowed whole by "the left" and "the right" due to its convenience and simple framing. Having petroleum industry is Evil, there is a global energy crisis, therefore involvement leaves one exposed. Not quite so easy as that to destroy a country that plans ahead.

For industry heads, the CIA is visibly a jumbled, mercenary, bloodthirsty thicket of contradictory transnational financial interests, and its messaging will swivel 270⁰, suddenly adopt Human Rights Watch or pure anti-third world GWOT characteristics, it's like watching John Carpenter's The Thing in action.

http://archive.today/2026.03.14-152250/https://www.straitstimes.com/world/panama-asks-chinese-shipping-giant-cosco-to-return-to-canal

http://archive.today/2026.03.16-115505/https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3346767/papers-please-china-raises-pressure-panama-amid-canal-row-ship-inspection-wave

Some lingering trade war propaganda that was propably never cleared up here, as the focus on anti-reactionary media criticism still inherits omissions made by said outlets. (No offense!)

Boring honestly, typical of Europeans. Invest in the steel industry, cowards! They won't. Renewables are alright. Services + tourism is always the safe move for first world governments.

He also pointed to the country's digital economy, which has been growing at around 28% annually, and identified technology, digital transformation, tourism and cultural exchange as areas for further cooperation. He emphasized the role of business-to-business partnerships in translating diplomatic progress into concrete outcomes.

“We have very robust trade, economic, and investment cooperation. Based on the results of last year, the trade rose by about 30%. Very good indicators. Moreover, we are seeing growth in all areas across the board. This applies to imports to Kazakhstan, exports to Belarus, and trade in services,” the diplomat said.

“We would be happy to see Belarusian business in various sectors of our economy. Including in the processing of agricultural raw materials, their production, in the transport and logistics sector, and in the digital economy. These points were discussed.”

Good start for further investigation, it's criminal how much I have been underlooking Central Asia, but I'm just trying to figure SEA out and we'll get to that.

https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-lauds-kazakhstan-referendum-calls-results-remarkable-178018-2026/

https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-sees-potential-to-double-trade-with-kazakhstan-178019-2026/

Note that the United States attempted to instigate a civil war in Kazakhstan a few years ago. They didn't get too far with it, but you can still find Human Rights Watch-type articles floating around about it. They intersperse their regular Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping Dictatorship reporting with Central Asian nations.