Viktor Katona is an Group Physical Trader at MOL Group and Expert at the Russian International Affairs Council, currently based in Budapest.
Disclaimer: views set out in Viktor's articles are solely those of the author in his private capacity.
Indigenous protests have taken over Peru, threatening to undermine the Latin American nation’s burgeoning upstream industry. To many it would come as a surprise that…
Every severe economic crisis shakes the basic foundations of seemingly mainstream policies and ideas and makes one wonder whether the recession’s impact could have been…
Russia’s ambitious LNG plans have so far based on two producing assets – the Gazprom-operated Sakhalin LNG and the NOVATEK-operated Yamal LNG. The addition of…
Guyana has become one of the main upstream stars of the past decade, rising from zero to hero in less than 5 years. Much of…
It might not be a secret to anyone that Russia’s coal industry has been pivoting towards Asia – domestic utilization of the country’s vast coal…
The youngest internationally recognized nation on earth, South Sudan’s relationship with its oil and gas reserves has been troubled and ambivalent – ever since its…
Whilst most of European media have narrowed down the deterioration in EU-Turkey relations to the issues of the “refurbished” Hagia Sophia and the protracted Libyan…
Nowadays it is not very frequent that one would hear of a new nuclear project coming onstream in Europe. Perhaps unsurprisingly the Old Continent’s forthcoming…
Somalia’s government has announced that it would hold its first-ever offshore licensing round this August, marking the starting point of Africa’s perhaps most adventurous oil…
The 2020 gas price crunch has substantially cooled down the hype around the Eastern Mediterranean’s recent discoveries in Egypt, Israel and Cyprus. Israel was the…
Europe has remained in the global forefront when it comes to willingly ceasing hydrocarbon exploration and extraction, fueled by a tangible political intent to make…
Anxious and unsure as to when exactly will the COVID-induced recession come to an end, both current and future oil-producing nations have been having quite…
It all started when leading European politicians, towering amongst them the German chancellor Angela Merkel, openly criticized the extraterritorial nature of U.S. sanctions against Nord…
Throughout the 2010s Argentina’s shale deposits were universally listed alongside the US shale gale, denoting the many similarities Vaca Muerta shares with Eagle Ford in particular and Texas’…
The recent turnaround in oil market sentiment was to a large extent due to China showing signs of demand recovering back to normalcy. May 2020…
The COVID-induced recession that has brought oil and gas prices down to levels that are painful enough for most if not all major producers. In…
Stuck midway in reforming its energy sector by chopping down unnecessary assets and optimizing the national NOC’s role vis-à-vis the government, Angola has endured a…
Europe’s Mediterranean region is emerging as Europe’s main front of commercial rivalry – natural gas producers that rely on pipeline supplies and utilize primarily oil-indexed…
Across the planet LNG prices in May-June 2020 have dropped to unprecedentedly low levels – landed seaborne prices still remain below $2 per MMBtu, compelling…
Paths to economic development might vary, ranging all the way from ruthless dictatorships hewing their way with an iron fist to established democracies laboring towards…