John C.K. Daly

Energy and nationalist politics are a volatile mix.

In the second/third world, multinational energy companies seeking new frontiers prey upon nations' inability to develop indigenous energy resources on their own, and in true capitalist buccaneering spirit and for the benefit of their shareholders, negotiate every possible advantage before beginning operations.

The current health of Venezuelan President Hugo Rafael Chavez can best be described as parlous.

The health of the leader of Latin America's self-proclaimed Bolivarian revolution has enormous global implications, even as the American press regards it as a minor diversion somewhere below March Madness.

Why should Americans care?

Well,...

As the reverberations on the March 11th attack by a U.S. soldier on two Afghan villages in Helmand province continue to abrade U.S.-Afghan relations, the deteriorating security situation there after a decade of foreign military intervention will more than likely claim another victim -- the long-proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.

The Western Pacific is a cauldron full of political disputes, from China's unilateral declaration of sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel island archipelagos to Japan and China mixing up over the title to the contested East China Sea's Senkaku/Daioyu island chains.

But looming over it all is Russia's...

One of the most striking social phenomena of industrializing societies is that, when the nation's economy begins to improve, those on the land increasingly move to the cities for greater economic opportunities.

To give but one example -- in 1960, the city of Istanbul had an estimated population...

In the final report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD), published in 2000, the authors noted that worldwide, an estimated 1,700 large dams were being built, and India accounted for 40 percent of those structures. The report noted:

The top five dam-building countries account for nearly 80%...

The Falkland Islands, a British windswept archipelago in the southern Atlantic off the coast of Argentina, last had its moment in the media spotlight three decades ago, when the two nations fought a brief but vicious conflict after Buenos Aires invaded the islands, providing a PR boost to Argentina's ruling...

France began developing a massive nuclear energy program with minimal public debate after the first oil crisis in 1974 and continued to support nuclear power even after the 1986 Soviet Chernobyl disaster.

French nuclear energy giant Areva SA, majority owned by the French state, operates the country's...

It depends how one defines "good" news.

Last week Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petrobras announced that it had struck good-quality light oil in its Amazonas state's Solimoes Basin SOL-T-171 concession block, which it owns 100 percent.

In a market filing Petrobras reported that the...