Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, successive US administrations have equated national security with access to, and control of, oil – particularly in the Persian Gulf, which holds two-thirds of global oil reserves. In other words, as long as we need oil, we need the Persian Gulf.
Faced with this unpleasant [...]

As the world watches and waits for the British company BP to stop the ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, you would be forgiven for forgetting that elsewhere round the globe the oil industry is just getting on with it.
Away from the glare of the cameras, there is the routine business of contracts [...]

Six months ago, the campaign organisation Global Witness exposed discrepancies in the oil figures for Sudan, raising questions as to whether the revenues were being shared fairly between the North and South of the country.
The revenues are important as they under-pin the 2005 peace agreement, which brought to an end one of Africa’s longest-running and [...]

So seven years later it will come down to this weekend.  Whether President Obama can withdraw all American combat troops from Iraq by August will be decided by the Iraqi elections this weekend.
If the election passes off peacefully, American soldiers will probably go home on schedule. But if there is a repeat of the sectarian [...]

Tensions are rising rapidly over the imminent oil exploration around the Falklands.
Yesterday Argentina accused Britain of “whipping up the spectre of war” after the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, insisted the Falkland Islands were being properly protected to allow oil and gas exploration.
“We have made all the preparations necessary to make sure the Falklands Islands [...]