Where the math is defensible.
Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
Ecuador's Mano Dura at the Inflection: Noboa's Security Doctrine, Energy Squeeze, and the 2026 Outlook
President Daniel Noboa's internal armed conflict declaration, the April 2025 runoff mandate, and the homicide reversal from 47 to 31 per 100,000 reframe Ecuador as a Pacific cocaine choke point with stranded oil and hydropower fragility.
Ecuador moved from peripheral cocaine corridor to Pacific epicenter between 2017 and 2023, with the homicide rate climbing from 6 to 47 per 100,000 (Ministerio del Interior). On January 9, 2024, President Daniel Noboa decreed an internal armed conflict and designated 22 organized crime groups as terrorist actors, including Los Choneros, L...
Iran 2026: Pezeshkian, the Trump JCPOA-2 Track, and the Proliferation Fiscal Nexus
Tehran sits on roughly 280 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, a collapsing rial, and a reformist president whose mandate from Khamenei is narrow. Witkoff's negotiating channel is open, snapback has fired, and the next deal will be priced as much by fiscal arithmetic as by centrifuge counts.
Iran enters the second quarter of 2026 inside three converging crises that any JCPOA-2 track must price together. The IAEA February 2026 verification report records roughly 280 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. Maximum pressure sanctions reimposed in the first quarter of 2025 have cut crude exports from peaks near 1.6 million b...
Iran 2026: Oil Exports Under Sanctions, China Shadow Flows, Fiscal Arithmetic
Tehran is exporting more crude than at any point since 2018, but the gap between gross barrels lifted and net dollars repatriated has rarely been wider. We map the shadow fleet, OFAC enforcement cycles, and three scenarios for 2026 to 2027.
Iran is shipping roughly 1.65 to 1.80 million barrels per day of crude and condensate in early 2026, almost all of it to Chinese independent refiners via a shadow fleet of 350 plus tankers using ship-to-ship transfers off Malaysia, Singapore, and increasingly the Sea of Oman. Discounts to Brent have widened from 8 dollars per barrel in 20...
Iran 2026: snapback aftermath, the 60 percent stockpile, and the second maximum pressure cycle
The E3 triggered the JCPOA snapback in September 2025, restoring six United Nations Security Council resolutions on Iran. The IAEA verified 274.6 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium before camera dismantlement. Trump's NSPM 2 has reactivated maximum pressure on roughly 1.6 to 1.8 million barrels per day of Iranian crude exports flowing primarily to Chinese teapot refiners.
On September 27, 2025, snapback under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 paragraph 11 entered into force after the United Kingdom, France, and Germany invoked the dispute resolution mechanism on August 28. Six pre 2015 UN sanctions resolutions returned, ending the JCPOA framework de jure. The IAEA Director General report GOV/...
Iraq 2026: The Sudani Wage Bill, the KRG Pipeline, and a Parliament Returning to the Sadrists
The October 2025 vote returned a fragmented parliament, the Iraq Turkey Pipeline remains shut three years after the ICC award, and Brent at 70 dollars exposes a federal break-even still near 92. The 2026 question: can a new cabinet hold the dinar peg, normalize KRG salaries, and clear the wage bill without an oil price reset.
Iraq's 11th parliamentary election on October 11, 2025 produced no majority bloc, with the Coordination Framework holding the largest cluster of seats around 80, the Sadrist movement returning under a renamed list with roughly 55 seats, and the KDP and PUK splitting Kurdish representation along familiar lines. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia...
Iraq Oil Fiscal 2026: The SOMO Barrel, the Sudani Wage Bill, and a Pipeline Still Closed
Federal oil exports near 3.4 million barrels per day, a wage bill above 50 percent of spending, the Ceyhan line shut three years after the ICC ruling. The 2026 question: can the tri-year framework survive sub 70 dollar Brent.
Iraq closed 2025 with federal crude exports near 3.40 million barrels per day on SOMO data and a fiscal break-even Brent the IMF estimates at 92 dollars, well above the 71 dollar 2025 average. The Iraq Turkey Pipeline has been shut thirty seven months since the March 2023 ICC award of 1.49 billion dollars against Turkey, stranding 250,000...
Pemex 2026: a 1.5 mbpd national champion, a USD 99.5 billion debt stack, and Sheinbaum's energy sovereignty bet
Mexico's national oil company has fallen from a 3.4 mbpd peak in 2004 to 1.50 mbpd in 2024, accumulated USD 99.5 billion of financial debt, and absorbed roughly USD 20 to 30 billion of federal transfers per year. President Sheinbaum inherits a USD 30 billion maturity wall through 2027, a refining system running at 80 percent utilization, and a constitutional commitment to zero net imports of motor fuels by 2030.
Pemex remains the most indebted national oil company in the world, with USD 99.5 billion of financial debt at year end 2024 (Form 20-F, April 2025) and a maturity profile that requires roughly USD 30 billion of refinancings between 2025 and 2027. Crude production fell to 1.50 million barrels per day in 2024, against 1.71 mbpd in 2023 and ...
Namibia's Orange Basin Awakens, Venus FID Slips to 2026 to 2027
Three operators (TotalEnergies, Shell, Galp) have outlined more than 15 billion barrels of recoverable resource off Namibia, yet Venus FID is now 2026 to 2027. Project economics, fiscal terms, and political continuity will decide first oil.
Between January 2022 and April 2024, three operators converted Namibia's Orange Basin from frontier prospect into one of the largest oil discoveries of the decade. TotalEnergies booked 2 to 3 billion barrels recoverable at Venus (Block 2913B), Shell logged Graff, La Rona, Jonker, Lesedi, and Mopane on Block 2913A, and Galp announced Mopan...
Nigeria 2026: Oil Receipts, Naira Convergence, and the Fiscal Arithmetic
Three years after the June 2023 naira unification and the simultaneous removal of the PMS subsidy, Nigeria enters 2026 with a fragile fiscal recovery whose durability depends on Brent staying above the mid-seventies and on the CBN holding its nerve at the policy rate.
Nigeria's 2026 macro picture is the first in a decade where the headline numbers on debt service, oil receipts, and the FX premium can be discussed with a straight face. The June 2023 naira unification and the contemporaneous PMS subsidy withdrawal have, in combination, restored a measure of fiscal arithmetic that the prior decade lacked....
Nigeria Year Three Under Tinubu: Reform Cohort, Political Economy, and the 2027 Runway
Three years after the May 2023 inauguration, the Tinubu reform cohort has rebuilt the macro arithmetic that Emefiele governance hollowed out. The political economy of holding the reforms through 2027 is the harder problem.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office on 29 May 2023 and within fourteen days had ended the petroleum motor spirit subsidy and instructed the Central Bank to collapse the multi-window foreign exchange regime. The naira moved from 460 per dollar to a NAFEM rate that printed near 1,520 in March 2026, and headline inflation peaked at 34.80 percent i...
Saudi Aramco capex trajectory 2026: oil, gas, downstream, and the Vision 2030 reset
Aramco's revised capital plan reflects a new equilibrium between oil maintenance, gas growth, and petrochemicals integration as Riyadh recalibrates Vision 2030 ambitions against a softer crude price deck.
Saudi Aramco enters 2026 with a capex envelope reshaped by the January 2024 directive to halt expansion of maximum sustainable capacity at 12 million barrels per day, down from the prior 13 mbd target. The reallocation channels roughly 48 to 58 billion dollars per year into upstream maintenance, the Jafurah unconventional gas megaproject,...
Saudi Arabia 2026: The Vision 2030 Reset and PIF Capital Recycling
Riyadh has phased The Line down to a 2.4 kilometer Phase 1 stub by 2030, deferred giga-project milestones into the FIFA 2034 envelope, and pivoted PIF toward AI compute, gaming, and listed equity recycling while Brent prints USD 65 to 75 against a fiscal break-even near USD 108.
Saudi Arabia entered 2026 with a recalibrated Vision 2030. The Line, originally pitched at 170 kilometers, now targets a 2.4 kilometer Phase 1 corridor by 2030, with the rest of the spine pushed toward 2045. Trojena anchors the 2029 Asian Winter Games, Sindalah opened in October 2024 as the first operating asset inside NEOM, and Qiddiya, ...
South Sudan 2026: oil restart, fiscal collapse, and post conflict risk
The February 2024 rupture of the Greater Nile Pipeline through war torn Sudan cut Juba's oil revenue by roughly two thirds. The 2026 restart is a stabilization wager priced against pipeline risk, election delay, and a currency that has lost more than ninety percent of its dollar value.
South Sudan entered 2026 with crude production around 150,000 barrels per day, less than half of the 2011 secession peak of 350,000 bpd, after the Sudan civil war severed exports of Dar Blend and Nile Blend through the pipeline corridor to Port Sudan. Oil financed roughly ninety percent of government revenue before the shock, and the Worl...
Venezuela Frozen: Maduro's Third Term, Sanctioned Crude, and the Essequibo Wager
Maduro took a third term on January 10, 2025, after a July 28, 2024 election the CNE called for him with 51 percent and the opposition documented as a Gonzalez Urrutia win. The 2026 question is whether sanctions, oil, migration, and Essequibo break the equilibrium.
On July 28, 2024, Venezuela's CNE proclaimed Nicolas Maduro winner of the presidential election with 51.2 percent against Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia at 44.2 percent, without publishing precinct tallies. The opposition, organized around Maria Corina Machado after her 2023 inhabilitacion, published more than 24,500 actas (over 80 percent of m...