The recent G8 summit did not achieve what Angela Merkel may have hoped for – a new treaty with binding CO2 emissions cuts for the world’s major polluters – USA, China, and India. While both India and China were under considerable pressure to accept such targets, they resisted, promising only to “cooperate”. India’s position on [...]
This has been something significant on the economic and trade diplomacy front that has largely gone unnoticed. But for a few mandarins in the Indian commerce and foreign ministries and some officials in the CII headquarters, the story has remained under wraps. It started around three years back and it is about India and West [...]
During a guest lecture at IIM Bangalore a couple of years back, Arun Shourie had asked a rhetorical question as to why oil distribution should be termed “strategic” and hence the oil PSUs should be tightly in control of the government. He didn’t pause to answer it, for maybe he knew that a majority already [...]
In the posts on a case for a carbon tax we saw a deliberate exclusion of existing power plants from the ambit of a “cleanup”. This made sense for a few reasons. Primarily since the plants are already up and running, it would be economically and politically more difficult to get them to cleanup. Since [...]
This is a follow-up post to the “The Case For A Carbon Tax”. There were some very valid points raised in the comments which I will try to address here. The concerns have essentially been clubbed into two points. Should the carbon tax pinch? Lets start with the power plants. Lanco recently won the Sasan [...]
If you go to the NASA website, you can see beautiful satellite pictures of the earth at night. If you look carefully where the lights are, it says a lot about where the world economy is today. Europe is probably the most uniformly luminous; but not as bright as the eastern part of the US [...]
Ajay Shah alerts us to a draft volume published by the World Bank (free download) titled Dancing with Giants: China, India and the global economy. Drawing upon the latest research, this volume analyzes the influences on the rapid future development of these two countries and examines how their growth is likely to impinge upon other [...]
It is reasonable to suggest that new roads, power plants or water reservoirs must be built before existing ones — if they exist at all — run out of capacity. It is also reasonable to suggest that when new infrastructure is being built, it is both convenient and economical to build more than just attend [...]
Attacking targets of convenience won’t bring down the retail price of petrol
I was invited to a luncheon yesterday with union power minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, hosted by the Indian Consulate General in New York. Mr Shinde was doing a roadshow inviting U.S. investors to invest in India’s power sector, which allows 100% FDI in generation, T&D and trading. I took notes about some key issues/facts about [...]
Indian Express reports: In a bid to encourage private investment, including from abroad, in the country’s ambitious nuclear power programme, the Department of Atomic Energy is amending a law which prohibits such activities. “We have been working on the possible amendments to the Indian Atomic Energy Act 1962 for the last five years and now [...]
I came across this interesting story in the Financial Express that claims that the Russian oil giant Rosneft has asked ONGC Videsh to underwrite part of its upcoming $15-20 billion IPO. In return, Rosneft will offer OVL a stake in its substantial oil and gas fields in Siberia, according to ONGC sources. I am no [...]
Manmohan Singh has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, (subscription required) a mini-manifesto, if you will. Regular readers of IEB will find nothing new. It’s an impressive to-do list, and includes many of our favorite things as well. So, are we going to see Mr Singh finally flexing his muscles and follow up with [...]
“Fossil fuel is dead,” declared CJ. CJ likes to make those kinds of superficially profound statements. We were meeting after a long time. I was in Delhi for a conference and caught up with CJ at the Taj Mansingh Hotel coffee shop. We were discussing the spike in the gas prices. “Dead or not, seventy [...]
I have a slightly different take from Blue Sky’s on the subject of overpaying for oil companies. While I don’t know whether we are anywhere near peak oil (we seem to start fretting over this whenever oil prices reach stratospheric levels) , I believe that over the next several years oil prices will continue on [...]
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