Separatism, Resource Regionalism. Threats to Oil markets

[jose chalhoub + 388]

With the current interesting issue going on regarding Sarawak region asserting its position in Malaysia and requesting more oil revenues, also considering the past recent issues of Kurdistan region clashing with Baghdad for more oil revenues and autonomy, coupled with other cases such as potentially latent cases of restive oil regions such as Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia Khuzestan in Iran, Xinjiang rich oil region in China, South Sudan relatively recent secession from Sudan being it an oil rich region, we might say that no longer nation states are relevant for global oil and gas business as before. Certainly each case is different but represents a critical geopolitical and political threat to the oil and gas industry today. 

In this sense, Just like we find and analyse the modern phenomenon and issue of the recent resurgence of resource nationalism reflected in the arrival of super almighty petrostates like Russia Saudi Arabia Venezuela to name a few, maybe we might be arriving to another relatively more new phenomenon which I call resource regionalism, which represents more or less what is going on when mixing oil and gas, geopolitical disrupting dynamics of separatism and the gradual erosion of established nation states and governments along with the assertion of clans groups and ethnic groups over energy rich regions inside a geographical space in most cases not considered by these groups of their own or not representative.

And it will be interesting how this will influence determine the direction of global oil gas and other natural strategic resources markets prices and the eruption of new blocks and players not quite traditional.