Steve LeVine

Energy events are having enormous geopolitical consequences, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an Oct. 18 policy speech at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. A global surge of oil and natural gas discoveries stands to make some countries potent and influential, and others weak and marginal, she suggested; it may trigger war, or drive a country to strike peace; and it may contribute to devastating whole regions, and the planet as a whole.

Over the past year, Russia has done a flurry of oil deals designed to resolve a long-term dilemma: It relies heavily on oil and gas revenue, but both the income and hydrocarbon production itself are projected to plunge. The deals are meant as a partial solution—to keep oil production at least at its current level of 10.3 million barrels a day. But if you look at events in the rest of the world, you get the impression that President Vladimir Putin’s latest steps—a $56 billion consolidation of Russia’s oil industry—may undercut his objectives.

Over the last 48 hours, Igor Sechin, the most powerful oilman in Russia, has initialed a $56 billion whirlwind of deals that, if finalized, would create the world’s largest publicly traded oil company—bigger than ExxonMobil, bigger than PetroChina. But while that is heady stuff, there is something else on Sechin’s mind than mere empire building. It is revenge against four Russian oligarchs who humiliated him and left him in the political wilderness last year. For that reason, what we may learn in an official announcement as early as Oct. 18 may be not just of a blockbuster oil deal, but also of the Waterloo of some of Russia’s most successful robber barons of the age.

US presidents have little impact on today’s domestic gasoline prices—that is almost wholly determined by global market conditions and players. That did not stop GOP nominee Mitt Romney from castigating President Barack Obama for high gas prices in their Oct. 16 debate. Nor did Obama attempt to dissuade Romney of the suggestion that the occupant of the White House can affect prices (presidents can affect prices in the long term). Check out the exchange here:

BP shares were up sharply on Oct. 17 in London on a report that its war with four Russian oligarchs may be at a close. The report, at Sky News, is that the oligarchs have an agreement in principle to sell their half-share in TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil company, to state-owned Rosneft. The reported price is $28 billion, slightly higher than the market had suggested a half-share was worth.

A123, a company whose MIT founders brought sizzle to the world of lithium-ion batteries, has filed for bankruptcy protection, felled by the electric-car industry’s slow start. The company received a $249 million federal grant in 2009, and the news is likely to be more campaign fodder for GOP candidate Mitt Romney, who has criticized President Barack Obama for providing billions of dollars to green-energy companies.

Somalia seems to be emerging from the two-decade-long chaos that made it a poster child for everything that could go wrong in a country. The number of ships seized by Somali pirates has recently plummeted, as seen in this chart by the US Office of Naval Intelligence:

MOSCOW—When, like Vladimir Putin, you’re the leader of a petro-state, the putative threats to your rule are many. One of the most menacing, especially since the Arab Spring, is an economic statistic known as the break-even point. It’s the price of oil required to balance your national budget. If oil prices aren’t high enough, you can lack the means to cover typically generous state-paid social goodies, and can abruptly lose your people’s favor. An ouster can soon follow.

A businessman has leveled kidnapping allegations against a brother of two controversial billionaire backers of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Three weeks before the election, the case may add new fire to one of the tightest presidential races in decades.

An astonishing decade-long surge of oil prices is reversing, according to a top energy watchdog. The reason is moderate global economic growth and a spike in oil supply from Iraq, Libya and North America.

In The New Yorker last week, a former newsroom colleague of mine, Chrystia Freeland, profiled the hedge-fund manager Leon Cooperman as the leader of “The Billionaires Battling Obama.” The centerpiece of the article is a letter that Cooperman wrote a year ago to President Barack Obama. In it, he lamented the president’s ostensible perception of wealthy people as “a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot who must be subjugated by the force of the state.” He was unhappy with “the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric [which] is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them.”

France’s Total has made a rare, open attack against energy pricing company Platts, asserting that the latter’s system for setting physical oil prices is erratic and does not always reflect the state of the market. Total’s complaint, made in a letter released Oct. 9, resembles allegations about Libor, the benchmark interest rate governing many loans and bonds that regulators say was manipulated by Barclays and possibly other banks. In June, Barclays paid a $450 million fine.

Four Russian oligarchs who have vexed BP for almost 15 years say they, like the British company, are prepared to end one of the most dysfunctional oil marriages on the planet. But one suspects more misery is headed BP’s way.

Much is made of the stunning growth of North American petroleum supplies, but a new report says that for the next two decades, Iraq will account for 45% of global supply growth, and literally become a new Saudi Arabia.

Now that he has won reelection to a third term, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will have to pivot to the country’s enormous economic challenges. Perhaps the biggest is that its economic engine—the oil industry—has been atrophying since 2002, when he fired 20,000 striking executives and workers from PDVSA, the state oil company, over a strike.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent the last dozen years wresting away the assets of foreign oil companies, and squeezing their ability to export. Now, though, he faces one of the most uncertain periods in Russia’s turbulent post-Soviet history, and he may reverse course and allow foreign companies to directly license oil and gas fields in the prized Arctic Sea. If the idea goes ahead, foreign companies would directly “book” Russian reserves instead of having to go through intermediaries, a big step in normalizing business in the country.

For generations of youths, driving a car is a rite of passage. But a growing body of evidence shows that the car is going the way of the Walkman. Young people, for example, are waiting longer to obtain a driver’s license, report Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle at the University of Michigan. In the US, the number of people aged 17 to 19 with driver’s licenses shrunk to just 6 in 10 by 2010, down from 8 in 10 in 1983. So it also is in Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Norway, South Korea, and Sweden, the Michigan researchers say.

The Afghanistan government has staked much hope on the country’s future as an exporter of metals, minerals, and fossil fuels. Afghanistan’s metals and minerals alone are said to be worth some $1 trillion, and the government has forecast that, by 2020, mining will bring it $500 million a year in taxes. The World Bank has been even more bullish: a 2010 report projected that Afghanistan could be collecting that sum by 2017, and that the industry could be employing 90,000 people.

In the opening moments of their Oct. 4 debate–before there was conflict on taxes, health care, and deficits–the US president and his Republican opponent squared off on energy. That included their respective opinions on expanded oil drilling, strategically driven industrial policy, and solar power (including some fibs).  We’ll probably have to wait until Oct. 22 and the third debate on foreign policy to hear the candidates explain how their energy policies might impact geopolitics and strategy. But we can crack open that can ourselves.

When the global economy recovers, who will satisfy China’s increasing demand for oil? In large part, the answer is America’s newly thrifty drivers, according to Douglas-Westwood’s Steven Kopits.

An eccentric Georgian billionaire has upset the careful script of rigged elections in the former Soviet Union, beating the machine of US-educated President Mikheil Saakashvili. But does Bidzina Ivanishvili’s parliamentary triumph Oct. 1 portend a Georgian contagion, in which neighboring strongmen are threatened by an emboldened citizenry?

Human rights lawyers feared the worst, but the US Supreme Court seems inclined to retain a law that is used to isolate some of the world’s most brutal nations by punishing global companies working there, court watchers say.

John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell USA, passed along the cartoon below by Michael Ramirez at Investor’s Business Daily, which was republished by the Houston Chronicle, and since then has been making the rounds of oil industry hands in the Texas city. Previously, Hofmeister explained to us the emotion (read: disdain) behind a deep oil and gas industry opposition to President Barack Obama.

If you want to run a country for life, the former Soviet Union may be your place. Leaving aside the occasional revolution in the streets, only rarely since the 1992 Soviet collapse has any incumbent national leader “lost” an election in the 12 core states. Two incumbent presidents of much-disparaged Ukraine have stepped aside in election defeats, and one did so in Moldova. But it’s never happened in Russia (Boris Yeltsin did not lose but resigned), the Caucasus or Central Asia.