By Riad Kahwaji

The threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which calls itself now the Islamic State, has eclipsed that of its mother group Al Qaeda, and has prompted Western powers to come together to create an alliance to eliminate this entity that has spread like cancer in Syria and Iraq and is starting to spill over into neighboring states. Following a NATO summit in Wales a group of ten NATO states led by the United States have formed the core of a large alliance that is hoped to include Arab and Asian States to combat ISIS. On the eve of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, President Barak Obama outlined the strategy for crushing ISIS. His strategy could be summarized as such: Waging an air-campaign against ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria and relying on the newly built Iraqi Army along with Kurdish forces and Free Syrian Army moderate groups to march on the terrorist’s group strongholds in Iraq and Syria to fill the vacuum, with financial, humanitarian and military support from an international alliance that will include Arab Sunni states and exclude Iran and the Syrian regime. There will be no American boots on the ground except for few hundred troops who will provide training and consultation to Iraqi and Kurdish fighters as well as Syrian rebels.

The task before this alliance is way much more complicated than simply attacking ISIS and driving its forces from Iraqi towns and cities that were occupied in a major offensive last June. ISIS is a byproduct of a failed international war on terrorism and a Sunni-Shiite sectarian war in Syria and Iraq that has been neglected by the international community for the past two years. How can the Obama Administration expect the “moderate” Syrian rebel groups to take on ISIS while they are still locked in a fierce war with the Iranian-backed Syrian regime? How can the Obama Administration expect to have Sunni and Shiite troops in Iraq to fight side-by-side ISIS while Iranian-backed Shiite militias are fighting Syrian Sunni rebels next door? The Obama strategy still lacks very important political dimensions that are crucial for a true victory against ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the Levant.

Syrian Regime and Tehran

The Syrian conflict must be addressed seriously if the war on ISIS is to achieve effective results. The new Alliance must agree on steps to force the Syrian regime to come to the table of negotiations to agree on a workable plan for a transition of power that will end the reign of Bashar Assad. The Alliance, especially the U.S., must be willing to use force against the Syrian regime if need be – like establish a no-fly zone – to bring about this objective. ISIS fate today is in one way or another linked to that of the Syrian regime.

Iranian-backed and controlled Shiite militias operating in Syria and Iraq, and branded by several Western and Arab states as terrorist, must be targeted by the Alliance to make it a war against all terrorists and not just the Sunni groups. It is time for the Obama Administration to address this matter seriously and stop sidelining it for the sake of the nuclear talks with Tehran. It will be impossible to expect a true and genuine support from Sunni Arab states if the Alliance and the U.S. Strategy ignores the presence of Shiite militias roaming in Iraq and Syria and agitating sectarian tension. International pressure must be exerted on Tehran to disband these groups otherwise they must become a legitimate target of the military campaign by the Alliance.

Excluding Iran from the Alliance should not mean that Tehran should not be engaged to resolve its political disputes with its Arab Gulf neighbors. International efforts must be exerted to encourage Iranian officials to meet with their counterparts in the Arabian Gulf to agree on outstanding issues that have heightened tension in the region. International efforts must emphasize the need for Iran to end its policy of exporting the revolution and the arming of Shiite militias in Arab countries in order to assert its influence. This longstanding Iranian policy has generated a strong sense of frustration and oppression by many Sunnis in the Arab world and facilitated the task of extremist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda to penetrate parts of the Middle East region and enjoy a hospitable environment rich with young recruits. The international community must realize that continuing to ignore Iran’s policy of using Shiite militias and sectarian approaches to gain more influence in the region will lead to the awakening of the Sunni Giant. The ISIS was a first indication of things yet to come if nothing is done about the current situation.

Moderate Arab Sunni States

Approaching Arab Sunni states to join the Alliance is a commended move by the U.S. Administration. These states can play a major role because only moderate Muslim Sunni forces can effectively combat radical Sunni groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Using Shiite or Western forces to fight the Sunni groups in an environment of Sunni-Shiite sectarian war will only lead to the radicalization of more Sunnis and the further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East region. But again, this must be done as part of a comprehensive strategy that will include either targeting Shiite militias or engaging Iran to remove these militias from the arena.

Time is of the essence for the Alliance and the implementation of its developing strategy to combat ISIS and terrorism. Observing radical Sunni and Shiite forces engaged in a bloody war of attrition in Syria and Iraq over the past two years has not led to the eradication of these forces as some Western officials might have hoped, but led to the contrary. These radical groups grew larger in size and occupied more territory and expanded their recruiting grounds to the West and other parts of the world. The sectarian war is radicalizing the moderate Sunnis and Shiites and will pose a serious threat to international security. It is time to bring it to an end and to strengthen the moderate Arab Sunni states because they are now the last standing barrier preventing the emergence of radical Muslim Sunni powers that will take the region, and maybe good part of Asia, back to the dark ages.

Riad Kahwaji, CEO, INEGMA

The post Defeating ISIS Requires Partnering With Arab Sunni States, Resolving Syrian Conflict, Engaging Iran To End Regional Sectarian Tension – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Graham Land

In Singapore, June, 2013 was marked by 16-year high levels of air pollution. Known as “Hazepocalypse”, forest fires in Indonesia and Malaysia caused the city-state to be blanketed in an unhealthy haze of smoky air for days on end. While the smog was largely caused by slash and burn agriculture in neighboring countries, the fires also set Singapore’s social media alight, with posts on Twitter and Facebook not only complaining of air quality, but placing the blame firmly at the feet of Indonesia’s palm plantations and both Malaysian and Singaporean investment in the palm oil industry.

Now, over a year later — and just one month after the government passed a transboundary haze bill — it seems that Hazepocalypse is creeping back. At 6am Monday the National Environment Agency Pollution Standards Index (PSI) peaked at 113, prompting authorities to warn residents with chronic heart or lung problems to avoid strenuous or extended physical activity. The new transboundary law exposes responsible companies to fines for each day they contribute to PSI levels over 101, which is officially considered “unhealthy”. Fines can reach $100,000 Singapore dollars ($79,000 US) per day with a cap of $2 million ($1,582,000 US). Singapore’s PSI reached a dangerous 401 last year with nearby Johor State in Malaysia calling a state of emergency.

Monday’s poor air quality prompted the National Environment Agency (NEA) to release a statement saying that the smog was…

…most likely due to the hotspots (forest fires) in South Sumatra detected over the past three to four days.

Given the continued dry weather in southern Sumatra, we can expect the hotspots to persist and the 24-hour PSI for Singapore to fluctuate between the high-end of the moderate range and the low-end of the unhealthy range for the rest of the day.

While Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia suffer periodically from severe air pollution due to forest fires resulting from irresponsible practices within the palm, pulp and paper industries, no Southeast Asian countries are included on the World Health Organization’s recent list of the world’s 10 countries with the worst air pollution. The study measured concentrations of particulate matter in 16,000 cities in 19 countries and found nine out of the 10 worst offenders to be Asian countries (all 9 in Western and South Asia).

The 10 countries with the worst air (according to the WHO) are:

1. Pakistan
2. Qatar
3. Afghanistan
4. Bangladesh
5. Iran
6. Egypt
7. Mongolia
8. United Arab Emirates
9. India
10. Bahrain

To keep up-to-date on Singapore’s air quality via social media, follow the Haze-Free Singapore Facebook page. Fires that destroy rainforest do not only result in unhealthy, hazy air, they also ruin livelihoods, endanger rare wildlife, damage biodiversity and contribute significantly to climate change. For more on the problems of the palm oil industry, check my previous article.

The post Singapore Smog Raises Fears Of New ‘Hazepocalypse’ – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Although President Obama insists that no American military “boots on the ground” will be used to degrade and defeat the radical Islamist group Islamic State (IS)—which is well funded and has captured much heavy military equipment from the Syrian military and U.S. trained and equipped Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga militias—that will make his objective much harder to obtain.

My recent book, The Failure of Counterinsurgency: Why Hearts and Minds Are Seldom Won, which summarizes the lessons learned from many historical wars against irregular armies such as IS, concludes that is almost impossible to win against guerrillas by only attacking from the air. Some damage can be done to armored vehicles, fixed targets such as supply depots, etc. if the guerrillas have any (IS does). Eventually, however, insurgents will blend back into the general population, and airstrikes will simply generate more fighters as a result of the outrage caused by the spike in civilian casualties.

So if boots on the ground are needed to effectively fight IS and Obama and the American people—as a result of the Afghanistan and Iraq debacles—vehemently veto that idea, what is to be done? Surprisingly, the best option is for the U.S. government to do nothing. IS is a threat to Iraq, Syria, and neighboring countries, but not a direct threat to the United States. But John McCain, his equally belligerent sidekick Lindsay Graham, and other hawks will scream about how naïve is the belief that IS will not eventually get around to attacking the United States.

Yet, unlike al Qaeda, the group’s main purpose is not to attack the United States. It’s primary objective is to do what it has already done—construct an Islamic State in the Sunni parts of Iraq and Syria, where it wins the support of many Sunnis as a result of oppressive Shi’ite governments. So it is not obvious that IS would focus its attacks on the United States in the future, if the United States discontinues airstrikes. Besides, many of the easy IS targets have been hit, at least in Iraq, and such attacks may quickly become counterproductive as civilian casualties mount.

In fighting an insurgency, the main objective should be—and which most traditional military organization have trouble getting their arms around—is to win the “hearts and minds” of the local population, not kill them. Mao Zedong, one of the most effective guerrilla fighters in world history, noted that winning the support of the population is key to winning this kind of irregular warfare because the population is the sea that the guerrillas swim in. Unlike regular warfare, in which both sides wear distinctive uniforms, guerrillas without uniforms attack and then just blend back into the local populace from which they receive sanctuary, supplies, and fighters. Despite Mao’s later ruthlessness upon taking power, when fighting guerrilla-style to gain power, he cautioned his fighters to treat the people with respect and fairness.

When going into Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military initially failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam War and made many of the same mistakes all over again. Instead of trying to win hearts and minds using a less violent counterinsurgency strategy, it once again wailed away with excessive firepower, thus killing or alienating too many civilians. However, that said, fighting guerrillas is difficult, because a foreign occupier never gets the benefit of the doubt when fighting locals—even brutal locals like the Afghan Taliban or IS. Also, foreign occupiers don’t know the culture as well as locals and therefore have much less intelligence about who supports the guerrillas and who doesn’t. Thus, for great powers, if they are using their own forces to fight guerrillas, they are much more likely to lose.

Thus, boots on the ground in the fight against insurgents should be local ones anyway. That said, the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga militias have not done too well so far against the battle hardened and well equipped IS. Fortunately, neighboring Shi’ite Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the other conservative Gulf Sunni monarchies have an incentive to train and equip Shi’ite militias (Iran), the Iraqi army, or the Kurdish militias. Therefore, regional countries should be able to handle a regional threat, leaving the United States to worry about any future training camps in IS controlled territory that might be training terrorists to attack the United States. (As noted previously, if the United States takes a less prominent role in attacking IS, the motivation of IS to attack U.S. territory will be much reduced.) Only if such terrorist training camps are discovered should the U.S. launch low-key, but congressionally approved, drone attacks to wipe them out; such fixed infrastructure can be targeted effectively by such limited airstrikes.

If pressure builds for the United States to get more deeply involved in the fight against IS, perhaps Congress could approve private U.S. companies, staffed with ex-U.S. Special Forces, to conduct the training of Kurdish militias, the Iraqi army, or even Shi’ite militias using weapons provided by regional powers. Avoiding the use of U.S. military personnel for training locals might avoid the danger of later U.S. escalation—as occurred during the Vietnam War. If President Obama says it will take three years to subdue IS, try 10 or 12 or 20 years. If they succeeded at all (which most didn’t), many of the counterinsurgency episodes my book surveyed took that long.

In sum, boots on the ground are needed to effectively fight IS. However, inserting U.S. military personnel for fighting or training locals likely would be counterproductive and would paint a big, red bulls eye on the United States.

This article appeared at The Huffington Post and is reprinted with permission.

The post Locals Leading The Fight Against Islamic State Will Be More Effective – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

How’s this for a juxtaposition on how nations respond to a global health catastrophe. Check out these two headlines from yesterday’s news:

Cuba to Send Doctors to Ebola Areas

US to Deploy 3000 Troops as Ebola Crisis Worsens

Reading these stories, which ran in, respectively, the BBC and Reuters, one learns that the Cuban government, which runs a small financially hobbled island nation of 11 million people, with a national budget of $50 billion, Gross Domestic Product of 121 billion and per capita GDP of just over $10,000, is dispatching 165 medical personnel to Africa to regions where there are ebola outbreaks, while the US, the world’s wealthiest nation, with a population of close to 320 million, a national budget of $3.77 trillion, GDP of $17 trillion, and per capita GDP of over $53,000, is sending troops — $3000 of them– to “fight” the ebola epidemic.

Okay, I understand that these troops are supposedly going to be “overseeing” construction of treatment centers, but let’s get serious. With an epidemic raging through Africa, where some of the poorest nations in the world are located, what is needed right now are not new structures. Tent facilities would be fine for treating people in this kind of a crisis. What is needed is medical personnel. The important line in the Reuters article about the US “aid” plan, though is that the US troops will,

…”establish a military control center for coordination, U.S. officials told reporters.

“The goal here is to search American expertise, including our military, logistics and command and control expertise, to try and control this outbreak at its source in west Africa,” Lisa Monaco, Obama’s White House counter-terrorism adviser, told MSNBC television on Tuesday ahead of the announcement.

Cuba apparently does not feel that it needs to establish a military control center to dispatch its doctors and nurses, nor does it feel that “military, logistics and command and control expertise” are what are needed.

Anyone who thinks this dispatching of US military personnel to Africa is about combating a plague is living in a fantasy world. This is about projecting US military power further into Africa, which has already been a goal of the Obama administration, anxious to prevent China from gaining control over African mineral resources, and to control them for US exploitation.

Ebola, to the US, is both an opportunity to gain a bigger foothold in Africa, and a danger, in terms of the disease spreading to the US.

Cuba, whose population does not include many tourists, and which is not a destination for many African visitors, either, is sending its medical personnel to Africa not to gain control of Africa’s resources, or to help it establish trade relations with Africa. It has no interest or hope of becoming a major player in the global contest for influence the way the US, China or Germany might. It is sending its medical personnel because they are needed, much as it did almost immediately following the earthquake in Haiti, where the US also responded not with medical aid but with troops. (The US Navy was dispatched, after considerable delay, and when US forces finally arrived, they found some 300 Cuban doctors and nurses who had already managed to reopen the undamaged portion of a Port-au-Prince Hospital and to set up tent hospitals, before the first US doctor even set foot in Haiti.)

This latest international crisis, which promises to worsen as the ebola virus spreads further in Africa and, inevitably, moves to other continents, highlights the twisted nature of the United States, which increasingly sees all international issues through a military lens, and every crisis as requiring a military response.

The kindest way to look at this would be to say that the US medical “system,” if it can even be called anything so organized, is so badly funded and so based upon the profit motive, that it is incapable of dispatching hundreds of skilled doctors to Africa to help fight the ravages of a plague like ebola. People in the US are seriously underserved by primary care physicians, the very doctors who are needed when it comes to combating the spread of disease. Instead, we in the US have all kinds of high-priced specialists in everything from dermatology and liposuction to cancer specialists who help us combat the diseases caused by our increasingly toxic environment and our chemical-laced foods.

Cuba, on the other hand, despite the nation’s poverty (the result, primarily, of over a half century embargo enforced by the US ever since a leftist rebel movement led by Fidel Castro ousted the colonial government of Fulgencio Batista), has a first-rate medical system composed mostly of those very primary care physicians now needed so badly in Africa.

Let’s not kid ourselves either. There will surely be some military medical personnel among these dispatched soldiers but the US is not sending 3000 troops to Africa as an act of charity. It’s safe to say that once those non-medical troops get their “command and control” center established in Africa. they will stay there. Ebola, to the Pentagon and the US State Department, is not a crisis, it is an opportunity, just as the earthquake in Haiti was an opportunity, not a crisis, and, I might add, just as Hurricane Katrina was an opportunity, not a crisis — an opportunity to level much of black New Orleans and to remake the city as a white, middle-class town.

The post Responding To Ebola – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Who, President Barack Obama might well be asking, will rid me of this turbulent, loquacious general? Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is certainly one of those characters who may well have given the game away. The United States, he is suggesting, may well find its soldiers on the ground fighting the Islamic State. Caliphate pretenders will do war against freedom loving Marines on holy desert fields.

The Senate Armed Services Committee were the first ones to receive the cheeky scoop, though it was hardly a remarkable one: everyone knows that any mission that begins in a noble, humanitarian way, with distantly directed missile strikes, has a habit of turning into a heavily laden ground mission. Video game trigger pulling becomes mission hugging very quickly.

“My view at this point is that his coalition is the appropriate way forward. I believe that will prove true.” For Dempsey, the juicy details followed with ominous promise. The lacing of boots might well have to be tied against the emissaries of Allah, and US personnel readied. “But if it fails to be true, and if there are threats to the United States, then I, of course, would go back to the president and make a recommendation that may include the use of US military ground forces.”

In speaking in such a manner, the General realised that he might have been getting ahead of himself. Both he and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are suggesting the training of some 5,000 Syrian fighters, and the involvement of up to 40 coalition states, though this is very much chatter before batter. Both also spoke about the moment when Iraqi and Kurdish forces rally to push the militants out, notably in urban areas such as Mosul.

Such moves may hardly count in the broader calculations – Senator John McCaine of Arizona did suggest that 5,000 Syrian fighters might come up a bit short against 30,000 Islamic State fighters. Then there was the issue of time and skill – how long would the training sessions last? “To many of us that seems like an inadequate response.”

Obama, Dempsey claimed, “has told me as well to come back to him on a case-by-case basis.” Such forensic, petri dish tactics might well work in a laboratory (case by case), but are impossible in the changing circumstances of bombing campaigns and faux state building and deconstruction. The Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL and whatever sexy acronym they happen to kill under, are proving to be a formidable migraine for the Obama administration. Missiles and locally backed forces are not working quite the same magic it was hoped for.

Obama finds himself with unenviable strategic lockjaw, the sort any Roman emperor must have felt when unsettled Germanic tribes, or the sniping Parthians were mentioned in meetings. Do you pay them off, incorporate or annihilate them? Empires are, after all, fuelled on blood and gore, and the American imperium is characterised by celluloid cant and the recently ineffectual allure of gold – the Islamic State is proving a different proposition.

The president has spoken too much about the unpredictable, getting ahead of the realpolitik game before reading the smoke signals. This is particularly so on the matter of Iraq, which has had a tendency to lure American troops in like an insufferably wooing siren. Since 1991, those occupying the Oval Office have had a habit of sending troops and weapons against Iraq, and it is with some irony that the only president to resist releasing troops into the Iraqi vice was the often unzipped Bill Clinton.

On September 10, Obama claimed in a televised address that “we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq.” His cunning plan would “not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.” Such assertions are proving dangerously frivolous.

He wants to take a genteel broom and do some dusting and sprucing on matters political; he wants to target a few naughties in the Middle East who have gotten out of hand in the hope that some order will be restored. He is also aware that the American electorate is not exactly enthusiastic to purr at suggestions that more US service personnel will be slaughtered in the Middle East. (Slaughter non-American civilians, yes, but certainly not the sacred of the stars and stripes.) He has, by some miracle, agitated carrion seeking hawks who see a meek reaction and the vegan pacifist doves who fear a corruption of US principles.

Representative Tom Rooney, for instance, wants destruction and mayhem if ISIS is what they purport to be. “And anybody you talk to who knows what they’re talking about believes that arming the rebels is insufficient.” Certainly, if Rooney is reading the fictitious scrawls of such commentators as Tod Robberson of the Dallas News (Sep 16), he may be convinced. “The world has not witnessed a deadly, violent, coercive religious sweep of this magnitude since the Third Reich in Germany”. History has well and truly taken an enduring holiday.

The technological imperative of the US war machine can only go so far, what with its excitable, drooling drone controllers and its Tomahawk missile fetishists. Eventually, something on the ground will have to give. The Marines will get busy by executive mandate, adding to existing ground forces (as if others did not know). Distances will be closed, and US hands will get caked and muddy. This, a response to what independent senator Angus King of Maine has termed a “whack-a-mole” approach.

During the address by Dempsey, anti-war voices were heard. They, and the president, see the same writing on the wall, though the interpreters are busy with what exactly that writing says. The most obvious, single word is: defeat.

The post Boots Against The Islamic State – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Independent upstream production companies focused on producing from shale formations or oil sands in North America were more profitable in the first six months of 2014 than in the prior two full years. Cash return on equity (ROE), a measure of the profit a company earns on money shareholders have invested, increased 7 percentage points from 33% in 2012 to 40% through second quarter 2014. In contrast, the cash ROE for global diversified vertically integrated oil and gas companies has declined slightly from 27% in 2012 to 25% through second quarter 2014 (Figure 1).

The analysis looked at 60 publicly traded companies that are required to submit quarterly and annual financial reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including both shale-focused producers in North America and globally diversified vertically integrated oil and gas companies. The groups differ in a number of areas. The producing assets of the global integrated companies are located in various regions of the world, while 98% of the assets of the shale-focused companies are in the United States and Canada. The former also tend to have multiple business segments, including exploration, production, midstream, refining, marketing, and chemicals; while the latter are almost exclusively exploration and production companies. The global integrated companies are generally much larger both in terms of liquids production and market capitalization. In the first half of 2014, the group of global vertically integrated companies produced a combined total of 27.7 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of liquids and had total market capitalization of $2.9 trillion, while the shale-focused companies produced 1.6 million bbl/d of liquids and had a combined market capitalization of $240 billion.

The relative profitability of smaller shale-focused companies increased for a number of reasons. The prices paid to producers for crude oils produced in various shale formations have risen relative to North Sea Brent prices since 2012, increasing the relative revenue of shale-focused companies. While some of the spreads have widened recently, the overall trend since 2012 through second quarter 2014 has been narrowing spreads as rail and new pipeline infrastructure allow these crudes to reach more economically refining centers in the United States. Absolute U.S. prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Cushing, WTI Midland, and Bakken have increased 7%, 4%, and 9%, respectively, in the first half of 2014 compared to their 2012 average prices. This has also contributed to higher domestic upstream profitability.

While increased prices have provided higher revenue, technological progress has improved productivity in various plays. Technological progress can increase overall production volume while reducing the cost per barrel of oil produced. According to EIA’s latest Drilling Productivity Report, new-well oil production per rig increased in the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Niobrara, and Permian regions from 2012 to 2014 (Figure 2). Technology such as pad drilling can lower costs and decrease the time needed to drill a new well. This has not only increased production for the shale-focused companies, but has contributed to a reduction in operating expenses as a share of revenue from 30% in 2012 to 18% through second quarter 2014, according to the company financial statements. The volume of crude oil produced from various shale formations, in particular the Bakken, the Eagle Ford, and the Permian, has increased dramatically. For the shale group of companies as a whole, total liquids production has increased 430,000 bbl/d.

On a barrels of oil equivalent basis, almost all of the increases in production since 2012 have come from liquids, with liquids as a share of total oil and gas production increasing from 57% in 2012 to 63% through second quarter 2014. Most shale oil and gas companies have redirected their drilling to “wetter” plays—areas that yield higher levels of crude oil and hydrocarbon gas liquids relative to lower-priced natural gas.

The group of global vertically integrated companies has faced different conditions that have resulted in slightly lower returns since 2012. The average price of North Sea Brent crude oil, the global crude oil benchmark, was 2% lower through second quarter 2014 compared to the average 2012 price, which reduced profits from upstream businesses. Since this group of companies has more geographically diversified assets, some are exposed to geopolitical risks and were affected by unplanned crude oil supply disruptions. In addition, while some companies within the group did have increased liquids production from North American assets, similar to the shale-focused companies, production declines in other parts of the world decreased total liquids production volumes by 414,000 bbl/d compared with 2012. Other less-profitable business segments, in particular downstream refining operations in Europe, Asia and Latin America, also reduced returns for some companies.

In previous years, the returns of many of the shale-focused companies were affected by the relatively lower prices for North American midcontinent crudes as compared with global seaborne crudes. As crude oil distribution infrastructure has expanded, the price differences between Brent and U.S. and Canadian midcontinent crudes have narrowed, and relative returns for shale-focused companies have improved. EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) forecasts the Brent-WTI spread to be $8/bbl in 2015, down from nearly $18/bbl in 2012, which, combined with improved productivity and lower costs, could make shale-focused companies less susceptible to absolute price declines. Increased profitability is a contributing factor to STEO’s latest U.S. crude oil production forecast of 9.53 million bbl/d in 2015, 0.25 million bbl/d higher than in the August STEO and 0.18 million bbl/d higher than the forecast average for 2014.

U.S. gasoline and diesel fuel prices decrease

The U.S. average price for regular gasoline fell to $3.41 per gallon as of September 15, 2014, 5 cents lower than the previous week, and 14 cents lower than the same time last year. Prices in all regions of the nation decreased, led by a drop of eight cents in the Midwest to $3.36 per gallon. The Gulf Coast had the next largest decrease, falling five cents to $3.17 per gallon. The East Coast, Rocky Mountains and West Coast prices all decreased three cents this week, to $3.38 per gallon, $3.59 per gallon, and $3.74 per gallon, respectively.

The U.S. average diesel fuel price decreased one cent this week to $3.80 per gallon, down 17 cents from the same time last year. The East Coast and West Coast led the declines, each down two cents, to $3.83 per gallon and $4.02 per gallon, respectively. The Midwest, Gulf Coast, and Rocky Mountains all decreased by a penny, to $3.74 per gallon, $3.71 per gallon, and $3.86 per gallon, respectively.

Propane inventories gain

U.S. propane stocks increased by 1.4 million barrels last week to 77.4 million barrels as of September 12, 2014, 13.0 million barrels (20.2%) higher than a year ago. Midwest inventories increased by 1.1 million barrels and Gulf Coast inventories increased by 0.3 million barrels. Rocky Mountain/ West Coast inventories increased by 0.1 million barrels while East Coast inventories decreased by 0.1 million barrels. Propylene non-fuel-use inventories represented 4.3% of total propane inventories.

The post North American Shale-Focused Companies’ Financial Performance Has Improved – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The East China Sea is a semi-closed sea bordered by the Yellow Sea to the north, the South China Sea and Taiwan to the south, Japan’s Ryukyu and Kyushu islands to the east, and the Chinese mainland to the west. Studies identifying potentially abundant oil and natural gas deposits have made the sea a source of contention between Japan and China, the two largest energy consumers in Asia.

The East China Sea has a total area of approximately 482,000 square miles, consisting mostly of the continental shelf and the Okinawa Trough, a back-arc basin formed about 300 miles southeast of Shanghai between China and Japan. The disputed eight Senkaku islands are to the northeast of Taiwan. The largest of the islands is two miles long and less than a mile wide.

Though barren, the islands are important for strategic and political reasons, as sovereignty over land is the basis for claims to the surrounding sea and its resources under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China and Japan both claim sovereignty over the islands, which are under Japanese administration, preventing wide-scale exploration and development of oil and natural gas in the East China Sea.

In 2013, China was the second-largest net oil importer in the world, behind the United States, and the world’s largest global energy consumer. Natural gas imports have also risen in recent years, and China became a net natural gas importer for the first time in almost two decades in 2007. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts China’s oil and natural gas consumption to continue growing in the coming years, putting pressure on the Chinese government to seek new supplies to meet domestic demand.

Japan is the third-largest net importer of crude oil behind the United States and China, as well as the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), owing to the country having few domestic energy resources. Although EIA projects oil consumption in Japan to decline in the coming years, Japan will continue to rely heavily on imports to meet consumption needs.

Both China and Japan are interested in extracting hydrocarbon resources from the East China Sea to help meet domestic demand. However, the unresolved territorial and maritime claims and limited evidence of hydrocarbon reserves make it unlikely that the region will become a major new source of hydrocarbon production.

Petroleum and other liquids

Hydrocarbon reserves in the East China Sea are difficult to estimate. The area is underexplored, and the territorial and maritime claims in the area of potentially rich oil and natural gas deposits precluded further development.

EIA estimates that the East China Sea has about 200 million barrels of oil (MMbbl) in proved and probable reserves. Chinese sources claim that undiscovered resources can be as high as 70 to 160 billion barrels of oil for the entire East China Sea, mostly in the Okinawa trough. Other sources have not corroborated these reports. Moreover, undiscovered resources do not take into account economic factors relevant to bring them into production, unlike proved and probable reserves.

China had a total of 24,400 million barrels of oil in proved reserves as of January 2014, according to the Oil & Gas Journal. Japan had a total of 44 million barrels of oil in proved reserves as of January 2014.

China began exploration activities in the East China Sea in the 1980s, discovering the Pinghu oil and gas field in 1983. Japan cofinanced two oil and gas pipelines running from the Pinghu field to Shanghai and the Ningbo onshore terminal on the Chinese mainland through the Asian Development Bank and the Japanese Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC).

More recently, both China and Japan have concentrated their oil and gas extraction efforts in the Okinawa trough. Most fields are operated as a joint venture (JV) between the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and the China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) with support from foreign firms and other partners, such as the Shanghai government. CNOOC listed its East China Sea proved oil reserves at 20 million barrels in 2013, according to an annual report, while other partners have not publicly released their reserve figures.

Only the Pinghu field, operational since 1998, has produced oil in significant quantities to date. Pinghu’s production peaked at around 8,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) to 10,000 bbl/d of oil and condensate in the late 1990s, and leveled off at about 400 bbl/d in recent years, according to data from IHS Energy. In the medium term, EIA does not forecast the East China Sea to become a significant supplier of oil.

Natural gas

The East China Sea basin, particularly the Okinawa Trough, is a potentially rich source of natural gas that could help meet Chinese and Japanese domestic demand.

EIA estimates that the East China Sea has between 1 and 2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proved and probable natural gas reserves. The region may also have significant upside potential in terms of natural gas. Chinese sources point to as much as 250 Tcf in undiscovered natural gas resources, mostly in the Okinawa trough, although these have not been independently verified.

China had a total of about 155,400 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas in proved reserves as of January 2014, according to the Oil & Gas Journal. Japan had a total of about 740 Bcf of natural gas proved reserves as of January 2014.

CNOOC listed its East China Sea proved gas reserves at 303 Bcf in 2013, according to an annual report. In 2012, an independent evaluation estimated probable reserves of 119 Bcf of natural gas in LS 36-1, a promising gas field north of Taiwan currently being developed as a joint venture between CNOOC and the UK firm Primeline Petroleum Corp.

The uncontested Pinghu field began producing in 1998 and reached a peak of approximately 60 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) in 2005, according to IHS Energy. The field’s output has declined in recent years to around 40 MMcf/d.

In 1995, Chinese companies discovered a significant group of oil and gas fields in the Okinawa trough. Chunxiao/Shirabaka is the largest gas field in this group and is used on occasion to reference the entire group of fields. China began producing at the contested Tianwaitian/Kashi field in 2006, claiming it as part of its Exclusive Economic Zone. China has not released production data from the Chunxiao/Shirabaka field, citing concerns about the unresolved territorial and maritime claims.

The Chinese government prioritizes increasing natural gas consumption to alleviate high pollution from the country’s heavy coal use. To that end, Chinese authorities intend to ramp up production and increase East China Sea gas to flow into the Yangtze River delta region, which includes Shanghai and Hangzhou, two large cities with growing natural gas demand.

Foreign ventures

Foreign energy companies have had mixed success in the East China Sea. In the 1990s, several foreign companies drilled a series of dry holes in uncontested waters. In 2003, Unocal and Royal Dutch Shell announced a joint venture with CNOOC and Sinopec to explore gas reserves in the Okinawa trough. However, Unocal and Shell withdrew from exploration projects in late 2004, citing doubts over the commercial viability of developing energy resources in the disputed area.

Primeline Petroleum Corp. discovered the LS 36-1 gas field near Taiwan in 1997, and signed an agreement to develop the field with CNOOC. Primeline’s subsidiaries assume all exploration costs in the contract, and CNOOC is the field’s operator. In 2014, the companies completed pipelines to link the field to an onshore processing terminal at Wenzhou, China to accept the future gas supplies. LS 36-1 has an estimated 173 Bcf of natural gas proved reserves and is set to begin natural gas production in the second half of 2014, according to IHS Energy.

Husky Oil China, a subsidiary of Canadian Husky Energy, holds an exploration block in East China Sea but has had more success with oil production in the South China Sea.

In August 2012, CNOOC opened three new offshore blocks for joint development with foreign companies in the East China Sea but has not awarded any contracts to date.

Unresolved territorial and maritime claims

China and Japan have two separate but interlinked claims: where to delimit the sea boundary between each country and sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands (China calls them Diaoyu, Taiwan calls them Diaoyutai).

China and Japan have long been unable to resolve territorial and maritime issues related to the East China Sea. Taiwan’s claim parallels China’s with regard to the islands, although Taiwan has not actively pursued resource rights in the region. Until these claims are resolved, it is likely that the East China Sea will remain underexplored, and its energy resources will not be fully developed.
Senkaku Islands

The Senkaku Islands consist of five uninhabited islets (small islands) and three barren rocks. Approximately 120 nautical miles southwest of Okinawa, Japan, the islands are situated on a continental shelf with the Okinawa trough to the south separating them from the nearby Ryukyu Islands.

Japan assumed control of Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands in 1895. For several decades after 1945, the United States administered the islands as part of the post-war occupation of Okinawa. The islands generated little attention during this time, although U.S. oil companies conducted minimal exploration in the area. In 1969, a report by the United Nations Committee for Coordination of Joint Prospecting for Mineral Resources in Asian Offshore Areas (CCOP) indicated possible large hydrocarbon deposits in the waters around the Senkaku islands, reigniting interest in the area. When the United States and Japan signed the Okinawa Reversion Treaty returning the Senkaku islands, Okinawa and other islands to Japanese administration, both the PRC and Taiwan protested the conclusion of the treaty.

The Japanese government began to lease the islands from their private Japanese owners in 2002, sparking protest from China. The Japanese government officially announced a deal to purchase the islands in September 2012, prompting a wave of protests throughout China.

Under Article 121 (3) of the Law of the Sea Convention, “Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf”. Japan has claimed that the disputed islands are not “rocks” in this sense and so generate an EEZ and continental shelf. China has not taken an official position on the status of the Senkakus in this regard.

Disputed maritime boundary in the East China Sea

China and Japan apply different approaches to the sea boundary in the East China Sea. Japan defines its boundary as the limit of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending westward from its southern Kyushyu Island and Ryukyu Islands. China defines its boundary based on the natural extension of its continental shelf. The overlapping claims amount to nearly 81,000 square miles, an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas. Japan has proposed a median line (a line drawn equidistant between both countries’ uncontested EEZs) as a means to resolve the issue, but China rejected that proposal.

Mediation efforts

China and Japan began holding bilateral talks about the East China Sea issues in October 2004, although Taiwan did not participate. Japan has repeatedly requested seismic data from China on Okinawa trough fields and has asked China to stop production until both sides reach an agreement. China has consistently rejected this request, insisting that the trough and its associated fields are within its jurisdiction.

The two sides have considered joint development of the resources as a means of moving forward with energy exploration but have not yet agreed on what area such development would cover.

In 2008, China and Japan agreed to explore four gas fields in the East China Sea and halt development in other contested parts of the regions. Both sides agreed to conduct joint surveys, with equal investment in an area north of the Chunxiao/Shirakaba gas field and south of the Longjing/Asunaro gas field. However, China began to develop the Tianwaitian/Kashi gas field unilaterally, eliciting a protest from Japan in January 2009. To date, no joint development has actually occurred.

Other regional actors

The PRC and Taiwan have strengthened their energy relationship in the East China Sea through a joint venture between Taiwan’s CPC and China’s CNOOC. In September 2009, the JV drilled a second well in what was previously a contested area between China and Taiwan. Both sides have been conducting exploration and production activities in the Taiwan Strait, although no major fields have been discovered in the Tainan Basin.

South Korea reached an agreement with Japan on a partial continental shelf boundary south of the disputed Liancourt Rocks and a Joint Development Zone in the East China Sea, but has not reached any such similar agreement with China. The United States has not taken an official position on the issue of sovereignty over the Senkaku islands or on the maritime boundary between Japan and China in the East China Sea, and has urged both sides to reach a peaceful settlement.

Notes

• Data presented in the text are the most recent available as of September 17, 2014
• Data are EIA estimates unless otherwise noted.

The post East China Sea Energy Profile: Exploration Hindered By Unresolved Territorial And Maritime Claims – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Montenegrin health authorities have expressed grave concern after the latest statistics showed a significant imbalance between the number of newborn male and female babies, Balkan Insight reports.

Data from Montenegro’s Ministry of Health say some 100 girls are born for every 110 boys in Montenegro – while the usual world ratio is 100 to 102-104. The imbalance is not attributed to Mother Nature – but to the popularity of gender-selective abortion in a country that still prizes male children over girls.

On Tuesday, the director of the national Center for Medical Genetics and Immunology, Olivera Miljanovic, warned that prenatal sex selection has been a growing trend in Montenegro for the last 15 years.

“Now, from EUR 500 to EUR 700, numerous websites offer early gender determination services. This is the ‘latest hit’ in modern medicine, a non-invasive method of determining the sex of the child from the mother’s blood,” Miljanic told a press conference.

Gender-selective abortion has been illegal in Montenegro since 2009 and the abuse of pre-natal determination of the sex of an unborn child is treated as a criminal offense. But the authorities say they can do little to stop women from aborting baby girls while the dominant culture still places such a premium on having male heirs.

The chair of the Parliamentary Commission for Gender Equality, Nada Drobnjak, said that the state and society had to to raise people’s awareness of the problem. In March, the Council of Europe called on Montenegro to educate health professionals and adopt strict guidelines in order to prevent selective abortions.

Last year, the UN Population Fund ranked Montenegro among the countries with the largest imbalance between male and female births, alongside India, Albania, Azerbaijan and Armenia. While some Montenegrin officials firstly denied that sex-selective abortion was widespread, the government has now ordered a task force to consider the problem.

The post Montenegro In Male Surplus Due To Abortions appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ilkin Izzet

The draft on Azerbaijan submitted for discussion to the European Parliament was prepared by the forces not satisfied with Azerbaijan’s role in European energy security, and persons acting under the direct support, custody and influence of the Armenian lobby, the deputy executive secretary of the Yeni Azerbaijan ruling party Siyavush Novruzov told reporters Sept.18.

He noted that the main reason of the subjective resolutions adopted against Azerbaijan is economic growth, accelerated development, revenue growth, reformation of the country, success in social and military sphere, the growing economic and political influence.

Novruzov stressed that it is no coincidence that the discussion of the resolution corresponds with the 20th anniversary of the “Contract of the Century.”

He added that Azerbaijan should reconsider its cooperation with the European Parliament and leave the Euronest.

“This organization was to play a role in strengthening the cooperation between Azerbaijan and Europe, expanding of cooperation. But it turned out a different way. They held unacceptable debates on Azerbaijan based on someone’s “denunciations” that do not meet the reality, despite the fact that the person discussing it has never visited the country,” Novruzov said.

He added that Azerbaijan plays an important role in ensuring the energy security of Europe, and in TANAP, TAP projects, and began more extensive work in this direction.

“Socio-political stability, economic growth concern both these forces and the Armenian lobby,” the deputy said. “The European Parliament was formed in May, and an issue on Azerbaijan was one of the first ones.”

He asked, “The question is why Europe decided to hold a baseless anti-Azerbaijani discussion while it has big problems itself? If the matter rests in human rights, the question arises why the European Parliament has not yet been able to adopt any resolution on the more than 1 million refugees and internally displaced persons? After all, their rights have been violated, too.”

“But there wasn’t any discussion held on this issue. They are not interested in violation of the rights of all; they are interested in a violation of someone’s rights. Why are they not interested in persons who were deprived of homes, property, relatives of those killed? One of the European values is a local government,” he continued. “Refugees are deprived of the right to elect and be elected, can not form their own municipalities.”

“Many families were massacred in Khojaly, but the European Parliament is not interested in this. Persons serving the Armenian lobby, working together, secretly visiting Armenia, cooperating with the special services of Armenia, for whatever reason, are more interesting for the European Parliament,” the deputy said.

Novruzov said that he is conducting a study of issues submitted for discussion, noting that the resolution was prepared by 46 deputies.

The post Azerbaijan Should Reconsider Cooperation With European Parliament appeared first on Eurasia Review.

South Africa’s Reserve Bank on Thursday kept the repo rate unchanged at 5.75% per annum.

The prime lending rate will remain at 9.25%.

South African Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus made the announcement amid a domestic growth outlook that the Monetary Policy Committee described as weak.

The repo rate – the rate at which the central bank lends money to commercial banks – was hiked by 50 basis points to 5.5% in January 2014.

It was increased by 25 basis points to 5.75 percent in July.

The post South Africa’s Repo Rate Unchanged appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By More Matshediso

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has established an Inter-Ministerial Task Team to help manage the tragic collapse of a building at the Synagogue Church of All Nations.

The multi-storey guesthouse, which belongs to the church, collapsed on Friday in the Nigerian capital of Lagos.

President Zuma on Thursday said the tragedy, which killed an estimated 67 South Africans, has caused untold pain to many families and all South Africans. Dozens others were injured in the incident.

The President announced the Inter-Ministerial Task Team during the Presidential Local Government Summit at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, Johannesburg.

“The members of the task team are the Minister in the Presidency, Mr Jeff Radebe as Chairperson; the Ministers of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs; International Relations and Cooperation; Home Affairs; Social Development; Police; State Security; Health and Defence and Military Veterans,” said President Zuma.

He said the rescue missions are still continuing to establish how many lives have been lost during the tragedy, “after which, we will know for sure how many citizens we have lost”.

The President again extended his and the country’s deepest condolences to the families and relatives of the deceased.

President Zuma said the task team will support families and do whatever is necessary to manage the impact of the tragedy.

“We urge all South Africans to provide all possible support to the affected families,” said the President.

“Many municipalities will be affected in a way by this disaster. We urge Premiers and Mayors to also provide support to the families of the deceased, who come from their areas.”

Team to assist in Nigeria

Meanwhile, government has dispatched a search and rescue team to Lagos to assist in the recovery of the remains of South Africans killed during the building collapse.

The ten-member team comprises a variety of experts dealing with search and rescue in rubble, as well as doctors, amongst others.

An operations centre has been set up by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation to assist families affected by the tragedy. The centre can be reached on 012 351 1000.

The department has also set up an Operations Room in Pretoria, which provides consular services and advice to families 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The post Inter-Ministerial Task Team To Manage Nigeria Tragedy appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The head of Iranian Parliament’s Culture Commission reports that China sells 500-billion toumans worth of rosaries and prayer stones to Iran.

Culture Commission member Nasrollah Pejmanfar told the Mehr News Agency on Wednesday September 17: “Why should our religious mementos and souvenirs market be taken over by China and cause difficulty for our domestic producers and manufacturers?”

The Mashhad representative in Parliament emphasized that China should be cut off from selling souvenirs in Mashhad and the market for these sales should remain in the hands of domestic manufacturers.

Mashhad is a pilgrim destination for Shia Muslims, and more than 25 million of them visit the Tomb of Imam Reza each year.

The post Iranian MP Slams China’s Hold On Religious Memento Market appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ardeshir Zare’i-Qanavati

Recent statements by the US President Barack Obama in an interview with the NBC news corporation have been taken as the sign of Washington’s firm resolve to fight the ISIS terrorist group. When explaining Washington’s new strategy for containment of the ISIS, Obama showed that his administration has overcome its past doubts and has made up its mind on this issue. The main point about this interview is the effort made by the White House leaders to stay as far away as possible from geopolitical disputes and political confrontations that revolve around the conflicts between Shias and Sunnis in the region. This issue has been a cause of tension between Tehran and Washington during the past years. During the same interview, Obama clearly said, “And the good news is, I think, for the, perhaps the first time, you have absolute clarity that the problem for Sunni states in the region, many of whom are our allies, is not simply Iran. It’s not simply a Sunni-Shia issue.” These remarks can be considered as the sign of a turning point in the US administration’s approach toward the developments in the Middle East. While inviting conservative Sunni states of the Middle East such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, which are also considered as US allies, to cooperate in the fight against the ISIS , Obama emphasized that the main threat to those countries is not posed by a Shia Iran, but by Sunni extremism and the fundamentalist terrorism spearheaded by the ISIS:

“Well, I think that it is absolutely true that we’re going to need Sunni states to step up, not just Saudi Arabia, our partners like Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey. They need to be involved. This is their neighborhood. The dangers that are posed are– are more directed at them right now than they are us.”

His words, which came as the announcement of Washington’s primary strategy toward the ongoing developments in the Middle East, have been somehow considered as a sign that the White House is giving up its past strategies, which were based on the confrontation between Iran and traditional allies of the United States in the region. The introduction of the ISIS into regional developments and cooperation between Tehran and Washington for the facilitation of national reconciliation in Iraq as well as the common interests that the two countries have in fighting the ISIS have all worked to make the United States see new realities on the ground, which are powerful enough to change many of previous equations. Undoubtedly, this important interview and explanation of the United States’ new strategy in the Middle East, the details of which were announced on Wednesday, are telltale signs of a major about-face in US policy on the basis of objective realities. Therefore, at least in technical terms, such a change is expected to signal a new round of cooperation between the two countries, which have remained hostile to each other for the better part of the past 35 years.

The mere fact that in his interview, Obama has clearly described Sunni countries in the Middle East as the US allies and warned them against the threat posed by growing extremism and Salafism as the most important threat facing them, is in fact indicative of a major revision of the past US strategy, which had already prompted Washington to even support all kinds of terrorist groups in Syria where they were fighting the Syrian President Bashar Assad. It is true that the new strategy is not being carried out in a vacuum and will have practical effects in reality. Therefore, there is no doubt that it will have consequences and aftereffects which can be considered very important. This is also a clear signal to the Iranian side and an indirect invitation for cooperation in fighting the threat posed by the ISIS.

Also, the fact that Obama addresses his country’s allies in the region, reminding them that Iran is no more the main threat they are facing, but warning them at the same time against the threat from the ISIS or Sunni extremism, is both an announcement of a change in the US position toward Iran and a signal to his country’s Sunni allies to avoid further intensification of tension with Iran. When it comes to the implementation of the United States new strategy in the Middle East, there is no doubt that Obama will have no other choice, but to go back over his past policy toward Iran and prepare necessary grounds for cooperation with the Islamic Republic. Of course, indirect cooperation between Iran and the United States has been already extant in fighting against the ISIS and has been manifest in both countries’ efforts to provide necessary support for the Iraqi government and Kurdish Peshmerga forces. However, with the new approach taken by Washington to collaboration with Iran, that cooperation can become closer and more pronounced than any time before.

In the past months, the insistence shown by the former Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, to remain in office had led to emergence of a certain form of unity among various Sunni and Kurdish factions in Iraq as well as regional and international allies of the United States at the cost of more divergence between Tehran and Washington. However, as a result of new developments, especially with regard to the United States cooperation with Iran to forge a kind of national reconciliation in Iraq, the position of Iran in current regional equations has been elevated to such a high level that even Washington feels the need to reach out to Tehran for cooperation over regional issues. Washington’s objective experience has clearly shown to the US officials that Tehran enjoys the biggest potential to defeat the ISIS as the two countries’ common enemy. They also know that the key to Tehran’s cooperation is, to a large extent, in the hands of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, pending agreement of other powerful institutions in the Islamic Republic.

During the past 35 years, it had become habitual for the United States to “throw the ball” into Iran’s court and Washington kept doing it all the time. At present, however, it seems that at least with regard to the dangerous phenomenon of extremism and terrorism, which is being spearheaded by the ISIS in the Middle East, this time around, Obama is playing in a different court and the balls he is throwing are targeting goals of the United States’ traditional allies in the region as well as geopolitical rivals of Iran. This important turnaround in the United States Middle East policy can be considered a strategic change of course, which can be also seen as offering a historical opportunity to Tehran. Therefore, in this critical historical juncture, the Iranian diplomacy should show suitable reaction to this new development with special sensitivity and by adopting a pragmatic policy in order to be able to both protect the country’s national interests and continue implementing its strategic policy in the region. By doing this, the Islamic Republic of Iran will be able to turn the ISIS threat into an objective opportunity for further strengthening of its stability and national security.

Ardeshir Zare’i-Qanavati, Expert on International Relations

Source: Shargh Daily
http://sharghdaily.ir/
Translated By: Iran Review.Org

The post Iran Viewpoint: Obama Finally Coming To Grips With Middle East’s Realities – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Senate has passed a bill authorizing President Barack Obama to begin arming “moderate” rebels in Syria as part of a plan to step up the US military campaign against Islamic State militants.

The bill, which easily passed Thursday by a vote of 78-22, is headed to Obama’s desk for his signature.

It allocates $500 million not only to the arming and training of Syrian rebels, but also to the expansion of US military action in Iraq.

Included in the bill is also the extension of US government funding until December 11.

Speaking shortly after Congress approved his plan, Obama welcomed the bipartisan vote.

“The House and the Senate have now voted to support a key element of our strategy,” he said. “We are strongest as a nation when the President and Congress work together.”

“When you harm our citizens, when you threaten the United States – it doesn’t divide us, it unites us,” Obama added.

He also reiterated once again that “American forces deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission.” This pledge has been questioned over the last few days, particularly when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he’d go back to the president and ask for ground troops if the situation in Iraq worsens.

Although the bill passed with majority support from both Democrats and Republicans, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed concern over the idea that Obama can now enter the conflict in Syria without Congress updating its previous Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Some lawmakers believe that without such approval, the use of force against the Islamic State could be unconstitutional.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that even though Congress has granted Obama the authority to arm and train Syrian rebels, lawmakers need to begin considering the passage of a new war authorization.

“We have a special responsibility given to us by the Constitution that says the American people declare war, not the president,” Durbin said, as quoted by the Huffington Post. “So we will come back and start the debate on what’s known as [an AUMF], a modern version…It’s a debate that’s long overdue.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who voted against the proposal, criticized it for potentially arming the same rebels that are fighting alongside Islamic State militants in the Syrian civil war against Bashar Assad. He said he would vote for a new war authorization, but slammed “the wrong way” in which Congress was currently approving such a program.

It’s not that I’m against all intervention, I do see [the Islamic State] as a threat to us – but I see our previous policy as having made it worse,” said Paul, according to the Guardian. “There are valid reasons for war. They should be few and far between…They should not be [hidden] in the pages of a 1,000-page bill and shuffled under the rug.”

The language concerning Syrian rebels was also tucked into a larger continuing resolution that funds the government until December 11, avoiding – for now – the kind of government shutdown that plagued Washington last year.

American officials have pointed to Syrian rebels as a potential ally in the war against the Islamic State, though reports last week stated that moderate rebel groups have apparently struck a deal with militants to not fight each other and focus on toppling Assad’s government. Concerns have also been raised over the possibility that moderate rebels, viewing Assad as their main enemy and not the Islamic State, could turn over US weapons to militants fighting Americans.

The moderate rebels who signed the deal include four distinct groups, including the US-backed Syria Revolutionary Front, reported Charles Lister, an analyst at the Brookings Institute. The SRF – a part of the Free Syrian Army – was considered moderate enough to merit the West’s support.

The post US Senate Gives Obama Authority To Arm ‘Moderate’ Syrian Rebels appeared first on Eurasia Review.

U.S. military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Syria and the Levant terrorists in Iraq, using bomber and fighter aircraft to conduct airstrikes yesterday and today, U.S. Central Command officials reported.

One airstrike near an ISIL training camp southeast of Mosul destroyed an ISIL armed vehicle, two ISIL-occupied buildings and a large ISIL ground unit. Another airstrike southeast of Baghdad damaged an ISIL ammunition stockpile, officials added, noting that all aircraft exited the strike areas safely.

Centcom has conducted a total of 176 airstrikes across Iraq, officials said.

The post Latest US Airstrikes Target ISIL Assets, Ammunition appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Computer scientists have created a low-cost, autonomous micro-robot which in large numbers can replicate the behaviour of swarming honeybees

Colias – named after a genus of butterfly – is an open-platform system that can be used to investigate collective behaviours and be applied to swarm applications.

Robotic swarms that take inspiration from nature have become a topic of fascination for robotics researchers, whose aim is to study the autonomous behaviour of large numbers of simple robots in order to find technological solutions to common complex tasks.

Due to the hardware complexities and cost of creating robot hardware platforms, current research in swarm robotics is mostly performed by simulation software. However, the simulation of large numbers of these robots in robotic swarm software applications is often inaccurate due to the poor modelling of external conditions.

Colias was created by a team of scientists led by the University of Lincoln, UK, with Tsinghua University in China. It has been proven to be feasible as an autonomous platform – effectively replicating a honeybee swarm. Its small size (4cm diameter) and fast motion (35cm/s) means it can be used in fast-paced swarm scenarios over large areas.

In comparison to other mobile robots which are utilized in swarm robotic research, Colias is a low-cost platform, costing around £25, making the replication of swarm behaviour in large numbers of robots more feasible and economical for researchers.

Farshad Arvin, from the School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, was part of the research team which developed Colias.

He said: “The platform must be able to imitate swarm behaviours found in nature, such as insects, birds and fish. Colias has been designed as a complete platform with supporting software development tools for robotics education and research. This concept allows for the coordination of simple physical robots in order to cooperatively perform tasks. The decentralised control of robotic swarms can be achieved by providing well-defined interaction rules for each individual robot. Colias has been used in a bio-inspired scenario, showing that it is extremely responsive to being used to investigate collective behaviours. Our aim was to imitate the bio-inspired mechanisms of swarm robots and to enable all research groups, even with limited funding, to perform such research with real robots.”

Long-range infrared proximity sensors allow the robot to communicate with its direct neighbours at a range of 0.5cm to 2m. A combination of three short-range sensors and an independent processor enables the individual robots to detect obstacles.

A similar but more complex mechanism has been found in locust vision, where a specific neuron called the ‘lobula giant movement detector’ reacts to objects approaching the insects’ eyes.

Co-author Professor Shigang Yue, also from Lincoln’s School of Computer Science, previously created a computerised system which supports the autonomous navigation of mobile robots based on the locust’s unique visual system.

This earlier research, published in the International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems (2013), could provide the blueprint for the development of highly accurate vehicle collision sensors, surveillance technology and even aid video game programming.

The next step for the Colias research team is to work on an extension of the vision module using a faster computer processor to implement bio-inspired vision mechanisms.

Full details of their research have been published in the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems.

The work is supported by the European Union’s FP7 project EYE2E, which aims to build international capacity and cooperation in the field of biologically inspired visual neural systems.

The post ‘Honeybee’ Robots Replicate Swarm Behaviour appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Gestational age is not the only factor that influences survival

A new study analyses the survival rates in Spain of newborns with a gestational age under 26 weeks. The results show that survival under 23 weeks is ‘exceptional’, although other factors such as birth weight and sex also have an influence.

Experts from the Spanish Society of Neonatology have studied the survival rates in Spain of newborns with a gestational age under 26 weeks, taking into account that a newborn carried to term is between 37 and 42 weeks.

The data have been drawn from the national database that gathers information on all babies born weighing less than 1.5 kilos. This database is constantly being updated and is used to ascertain the results of the care provided to these premature babies with less than 32 weeks’ gestation.

“The more premature they are, the more complications they present due to their prematurity and the lower their chances of survival,” Fermín García-Muñoz Rodrigo, of the University Maternity Hospital of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and one of the authors of the study, explained to SINC. “And, when they do survive, they are at high risk of suffering from sequelae in their neurological and sensory development”.

For this study, published in the ‘Anales de Pediatría’ journal, the experts only analysed the youngest newborns, in other words, 3,236 babies born after 26 weeks or less of pregnancy. According to the experts, the so-called ‘limit of viability’ is between 22 and 25 weeks.

“Babies rarely survive at 22 weeks and, when they do, it is at the expense of enduring many complications and long hospital stays, which involve a lot of suffering for them and their families,” García-Muñoz Rodrigo added.

The chances of survival increase from that point onwards and the proportion of complications gradually decreases as the gestational age rises. Indeed, babies at 26 weeks, despite being very high-risk, are considered viable and are a benchmark group for comparing the results from the other gestational ages.

The results show that the precise survival rates by gestational age were 12..5%; 13.1%; 36.9%; 55.7% and 71.9% at 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26 weeks, respectively.

Survival with no serious intracranial haemorrhage, periventricular leukomalacia (damage to the brain’s white matter close to the ventricles), bronchopulmonary dysplasia (chronic lung disease) or retinopathy of prematurity (abnormal development of the blood vessels in the retina) stood at 1.5%; 9.5%; 19.0% and 29.9% at 23, 24, 25 and 26 weeks, respectively.

“Survival with no serious illness in newborns under 23 weeks is exceptional, and very low in newborns of 23 and 24 weeks,” the doctor pointed out. “Newborns of 25 weeks or more have a reasonable chance of survival and, in the absence of major malformations, they should be given active resuscitation and intensive care”.

Other relevant factors

The group of authors will shortly publish another study which analyses other factors that may have an influence on the survival of these babies, in addition to gestational age.

“Birth weight –the higher, the better–, sex –girls develop a little better than boys–, whether or not the mother was given corticoids before giving birth to help to develop the baby’s lungs and single foetuses compared to multiple pregnancies are very important factors as they all increase the chances of survival,” García-Muñoz Rodrigo underlined.

The expert concluded by saying that medicine is not an exact science and that every birth must be treated on an individual case-by-case basis. “Other factors such as whether or not the foetus presents malformations, the monitoring of the pregnancy, the parents’ values and expectations, etc., are details that should also be taken into consideration”.

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Some relationships last a lifetime – and University of Leicester archaeologists have discovered that they can last even longer after unearthing two skeletons at a lost chapel in Leicestershire that have been holding hands for 700 years.

The happy couple refused to be parted by death when they were discovered by a team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) working with local volunteers during an excavation at the Chapel of St Morrell in Leicestershire, a site of pilgrimage in Hallaton during the 14th Century.

The four year excavation project with the Hallaton Fieldwork Group (HFWG) has revealed the full plan of the chapel as well as the cemetery and evidence that the hillside has been used since at least the Roman period.

As well as the touching skeletal union, the excavations have also identified the walls and tiled floor of the chapel as well as fragments of stone masonry, wall plaster, tiles and lead from the windows. A number of silver pennies dating between the 12th – 16th centuries have also been found on the site indicating when the chapel was in use.

Vicki Score, ULAS project manager, said: “’We have seen similar skeletons before from Leicester where a couple has been buried together in a single grave. The main question we find ourselves asking is why were they buried up there? There is a perfectly good church in Hallaton. This leads us to wonder if the chapel could have served as some sort of special place of burial at the time.”

The team believe the chapel may have been an area of pilgrimage. Alternatively, the bodies might have been refused burial in the main church, perhaps because they were criminals, foreigners or sick.

A total of 11 skeletons have been excavated so far, all orientated east-west in the Christian tradition and radiocarbon dated to the 14th century.

Roman archaeology found beneath the medieval chapel suggests that the hilltop, which is the starting point for the Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking, has been a special place for over 2000 years.

A recent open weekend to promote the excavations was hugely successful, with the local school being given a tour of the excavations and several hundred people visiting over the course of the weekend.

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Business groups and their political allies advocate deregulation as a pathway to faster growth, pointing to a strong negative relationship between regulatory barriers to entry and economic performance. This column argues that cross-sectional estimates have oversold the strength of this relationship and its implications for policy. Quasi-experimental evidence from a Portuguese policy reform shows that deregulation matters, but its impact is limited – it is not the panacea that pundits proclaim it to be.

By Lee Branstetter, Francesco Lima, Lowell Taylor and Ana Venâncio

As the West struggles to rekindle growth in the lingering aftermath of the Great Recession, pro-business groups on both sides of the Atlantic have fingered government overregulation as a barrier to entrepreneurship and firm formation.  Advocates of deregulation (as a growth strategy) point to a large economic literature that associates regulatory barriers to entry with slow growth in developed countries, and a failure to develop in poor countries.  Some of the central ideas in this stream of research were elegantly articulated by De Soto (1989, 2000), and important empirical evidence was provided by Djankov et al. (2002) – who created the first cross-national comparative data set on the costs of new business formation and explored it in a series of subsequent papers (Djankov et al. 2006, Djankov 2008, 2009). Other researchers have followed, including Bertrand and Kramarz (2002), Aghion et al. (2008), Bruhn (2011), Kaplan et al. (2011), and others.   The plausible economic logic and the striking negative correlation in the cross-section of countries between measures of entry regulation and overall economic performance led the World Bank to set up a Doing Business Project that placed significant emphasis on these entry barriers.  The World Bank has actively sought to encourage governments around the world to reduce these barriers, and has had a significant impact on policy.  The Doing Business Project website documents 238 entry (de)regulatory reforms in 114 economies over the past several years.  Djankov (2008) goes so far as to describe business entry reforms as the “prevalent legal and administrative reform around the world in the past decade.”

But what has all this actually accomplished?  Or to put the question another way, how much growth can be plausibly generated by a reduction in barriers to entry?  We address this question in our recent paper (Branstetter et al. 2014).  We use a theoretical model of entrepreneurship based on the seminal work of Lucas (1978) to show that the most productive, promising start-up firms are the ones least likely to be dissuaded from entry by regulations and fees – even fairly significant ones.  Conversely, the firms most likely to be dissuaded from entry by government regulation are low quality firms founded by less capable entrepreneurs that operate predominantly in low-tech sectors, innovate little, stay small, and make at best modest contributions to aggregate growth in employment, output, and productivity.  We then take the implications of this model to a matched employee-employer data set that measures the impact of one of the most ambitious entry de-regulation programs in recent history: the “On the Spot” Program implemented in Portugal in the mid-2000s, well before the onset of the Great Recession or the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

In 2000 Portugal had one of the most restrictive entry regimes in the Western world.  Portugal ranked 113th out of 155 countries in the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business Index’.  A would-be entrepreneur had to visit several different public agencies, complete 11 procedures, fill out 20 forms and documents, wait between 54 and 78 days, and pay almost €2,000 – nearly 14% of per capita national income in the  mid-2000s – before establishing a new firm.  In 2005 a new law swept away most of these restrictions, replacing them with a gradually implemented national network of “one-stop shops,” in which the would-be entrepreneur need only visit a single facility, complete just seven procedures, and register the new firm within one hour – paying only €360.   In 2005-2006 the Portuguese government received an award from the European Commission for this far-reaching deregulation, and the World Bank moved Portugal from 113th to 33rd in its Doing Business ranking.  Figure 1 provides a graphical summary of the extent of Portugal’s reform.

Figure 1. Portugal slashes the red tape constraining business entry

Because of resource constraints, the new one-stop shops were implemented gradually across the country, in a manner that was not systematically correlated with the fertility of the different regions as sites for entrepreneurship.  This allowed us to take a difference-in-differences approach to quantifying the impact of this reform on firm formation and employment creation.  The matched employer-employee database also allowed us to break new ground in this literature by measuring the characteristics of the ‘marginal’ firms and founders who entered the market as this deregulation was gradually implemented across the country.

The good news is that the reform worked as expected:  it increased the number of monthly start-ups by approximately 17% and the number of new jobs by 22%.  Our regression coefficients imply that full nationwide implementation would generate roughly 4,500 firms and 17,500 jobs over two years – certainly non-trivial.  On the other hand, the impact is clearly limited in the broader context of a labour force of 5.5 million, with 400,000 unemployed in 2005.

As our model predicts, we find that the firms whose entry is plausibly induced by the reform tend to be small, owned by relatively poorly educated entrepreneurs, and operate in low-tech industries, and they are less likely to survive over the first two years after entry than the cohorts of entrants that preceded them.  These results suggest that the positive (but limited) impact of entry deregulation is constrained, in part, by the low quality of the firms deregulation brings into the market place.  Prometheus is not unshackled by these deregulation episodes – the best entrepreneurs and firms enter and thrive even in relatively inhospitable environments.  Entry deregulation, even one as sweeping as Portugal’s, does not bring Steve Jobs into the marketplace; it opens another convenience shop around the corner.

It would be inappropriate to conclude that efforts to ease entry regulation are misdirected. Their benefits are clear, especially in contexts where the pre-reform levels of red tape were especially high, as in pre-reform Portugal.   We also need to be cautious in over-extrapolating our conclusions beyond the Portuguese context from which they were drawn.  Portugal then, and still today, retains one of the most rigid labour market regimes in Western Europe – a policy choice that may have a much larger negative impact on growth and productivity than the entry restrictions abolished back in 2005.  The need for further structural reform in Southern Europe and elsewhere is obvious.

Still, it is important that we not oversell the growth benefits of entry deregulation reforms.  The best scholars in this literature have always acknowledged the hazards of overreliance on the strong negative cross-sectional relationship between entry restrictions and economic performance at the country level, precisely because countries with overly restrictive entry regulations often suffer from other economic and policy problems (see the discussion in Djankov et al. 2002).  Now would be a good time for the policy ‘experts’ and the more responsible journalists in the business press to practice similar caution.  Economists across various disciplines have experienced first-hand how overselling the efficacy of our favoured policies can backfire, undermining the credibility and influence of the discipline in the long run.  A bit more modesty and honesty in this policy discussion might be not just the right thing for the world, but the right thing for ourselves.

About the authors:
Lee Branstetter
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Francesco Lima
Assistant Professor of Economics and Econometrics at the Department of Engineering and Management at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa

Lowell Taylor
H. John Heinz III Professor of Economics at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University

Ana Venâncio
Assistant Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at ISEG – Lisboa School of Economics and Management, Universidade de Lisboa

References
Bertrand, M and F Kramarz (2002), “Does entry regulation hinder job creation? Evidence from the French retail industry”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 117(4), pp. 1369–413.

Branstetter, L, F Lima, L Taylor, and A Venancio (2014), “Do Entry Regulations Deter Entrepreneurship and Job Creation?  Evidence from Recent Reforms in Portugal”, Economic Journal, vol. 124, pp. 805-832.

Bruhn, M (2011), “License to sell: the effect of business registration reform on entrepreneurial activity in Mexico”, Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 93(1), pp. 382–6.

De Soto, H (1989), The Other Path:  The Invisible Revolution in the Third World, New York:  Harper and Row.

De Soto, H (2000), The Mystery of Capital:  Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, New York:  Basic Books.

Djankov, S (2008), “A Response to Is Doing Business Damaging Business?”, Working Paper, World Bank.

Djankov, S (2009), “The Regulation of Entry:  A Survey”, World Bank Research Observer, vol. 24 (2), pp. 183-203.

Djankov, S, R La Porta, F Lopez-de Silanes, and A Schleifer (2002), “The Regulation of Entry”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 117, pp. 1-37.

Djankov, S, C McLiesh, and R Ramalho (2006), “Regulation and Growth”, Economics Letters, vol. 92(3), pp. 395-401.

Kaplan, D S, E Piedra, and E Seira (2011), “Entry regulation and business start-ups: evidence from Mexico”, Journal of Public Economics, vol. 95(11), pp. 1501–15.

Lucas, R E (1978), “On the size distribution of business firms”, Bell Journal of Economics, vol. 9(2), pp. 508–23.

The post Prometheus Unbound? The Modest Benefits Of Entry Deregulation In Portugal – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Paul Ciocoiu

A newly inaugurated gas pipeline connecting the Romanian city of Iasi and the Moldovan border town of Ungheni will have a significant impact on the former Soviet republic’s economy, but further investments are required for the line to get to its full operational capacity, analysts told SETimes.

The 42-kilometre long gas pipe was inaugurated late last month by Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta and his Moldovan counterpart, Iurie Leanca. “Moldova and Romania, to be truly independent, need energy. Together we can be truly independent and together we can be really respected and this is the message we are sending to Europe and the others,” Ponta said.

“These projects are not against someone else, but in the interest of the Republic of Moldova,” Leanca said. “This means we will be more confident no one will be able to create us problems, threaten us, but we will have in return an absolutely normal, civilized relation.”

The gas pipeline, which took a year to complete, cost the two countries 26 million euros, of which 7 million came from the EU. Brussels has also made 10 million euros available to extend the pipe to Chisinau. If completed, the entire infrastructure would cover as much as half of Moldova’s gas demand.

EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger highlighted the impact of the new gas pipeline. “We are celebrating that Moldova is directly integrated into the EU gas market. This will enhance its energy security and reduce its dependence from the only supplier it has now,” he said at the inauguration ceremony.

Speaking to SETimes, Romanian and Moldovan analysts said the new pipeline will have a large impact on the Moldavian economy.

“The Iasi-Chisinau gas pipeline has a major significance for the country’s energy security which will directly influence the current and future economic potential of the Republic of Moldova. Even though in its initial phase the pipeline can cover only 10-15 percent of the country’s necessities, its capacity can go up to as much as 1.5 billion cubic meters annually,” Denis Cenusa, an associate expert with the Moldovan economic think-tank Expert Group, told SETimes.

He also said the new gas line will put competitive pressure on Russian state giant Gazprom, which will lead to a decrease of gas prices. Even though the pipe is important to ensure the country’s energy security, Cenusa underlined the economic advantages will be substantial once the 130-kilometre long gas infrastructure, linking Ungheni to Chisinau, is finished.

“The most optimistic calculations show this would be possible only in 2019 and only if serious investments are made,” Cenusa said.

Moldova currently imports about 1.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia annually which means that, if the Iasi-Chisinau pipe becomes fully operational, its capacity will go beyond the volume of gas imports.

“The main effect of this project is that it is harder now to blackmail the Republic of Moldova since it now has more than one source of natural gas. Secondly, and as a consequence of the first aspect, Gazprom will not be able impose high prices anymore,” Otilia Nutu, an energy specialist with ExpertForum, a leading Romanian think-tank, told SETimes.

She said that the Iasi-Ungheni gas pipeline marks only the first stage of a process which will help Moldova further reduce its dependency on Russian gas. “Europe has now embarked upon an irreversible process of reducing its dependency on the Russian gas, the only question remaining is how fast this process will deploy.”

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