Matthew Smith is Oilprice.com's Latin-America correspondent. Matthew is a veteran investor and investment management professional. He obtained a Master of Law degree and is currently located in Latin America. Matthew writes on oil and gas, mining and infrastructure.
Major energy companies are becoming increasingly sensitive to drilling in high-risk environments such as the Arctic, Barents Sea and the Amazon Basin. A combination of…
In a surprise move, President Biden has withdrawn U.S. support for a Saudi-led military campaign against Houthi rebels in war-torn Yemen, describing the country’s bitter…
Crisis-torn Argentina has managed to avert another disaster in its economically crucial hydrocarbon sector. Many institutional investors are unhappy with Buenos Aires’ sovereign debt restructuring…
Colombia is not a country usually associated with crude oil. Low proven petroleum reserves and falling production see Colombia rank well behind many of the…
Globally integrated energy supermajor ExxonMobil was severely mauled during 2020. The company reported a massive 2020 full-year loss of $22 billion, its worst performance in…
Harsh U.S. sanctions, a crumbling economy, and near collapsed petroleum industry have done little, if anything, to loosen President Maduro’s grip on power in Venezuela.…
Global energy markets and industry insiders believe that it was a good idea for Saudi Arabia to slash oil production by one million barrels daily…
The tiny South American countries of Guyana and Suriname are the focus of Latin America’s latest oil boom. A slew of oil discoveries by ExxonMobil…
President Biden’s decision to ax the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which had been approved by his predecessor, is a tremendous blow for Canada’s energy sector…
For roughly two decades since Hugo Chavez won the Venezuelan presidency and commenced his socialist Bolivarian revolution, the country, which was once Latin America’s largest…
As far back as the early 1980s, Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras as well as the government were aware of the vast untapped oil wealth…
Despite outside assistance from Russia, China and Iran, the embattled socialist regime of President Maduro has proven incapable of rebuilding Venezuela’s once-mighty petroleum industry. According…
Last year was tough for the global oil industry as the COVID-19 pandemic and an ongoing oil supply glut rocked petroleum-dependent emerging economies, notably in…
The sub-Saharan country of Angola is not one which readily springs to mind when thinking about oil producing nations. The deeply impoverished former Portuguese colony,…
OPEC was formed in 1960 by founding members Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. For a brief period, the petroleum cartel became the dominant…
What is fast becoming the world’s hottest offshore oil play, the Guyana-Suriname Basin, has entered the headlines once again. Hot on the heels of ExxonMobil…
Sharply weaker oil prices and the global COIVD-19 pandemic had little material impact on Brazil’s massive offshore oil boom. Even the fact that the oil…
Much has been made of President-elect Joe Biden’s energy policies and the negative impact they will have on the U.S. oil industry, which is laboring…
Like many global oil majors ExxonMobil is under considerable pressure because of the significant fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, sharply weaker oil prices and the…
After the Second World War crude oil and control of its production became an important driver of global geopolitics. Crude oil became an essential component…