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EnergySource

Mar 12, 2020

Oil market meltdown?

By John Soughan

Over the weekend of March 7–8, the breakdown of the previous oil production agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia led to the broader collapse of the arrangement between OPEC and OPEC+. What will the rift will mean for the global oil market?

Coronavirus Energy Markets & Governance

Event Recap

Mar 11, 2020

Atlantic Council press call: Oil market meltdown: Price wars, coronavirus, and energy geopolitics

Last week’s breakdown of OPEC+ meetings in Vienna has turned a demand side driven decline in oil prices caused by the impacts of Coronavirus into an oil price war between two oil producing giants, with US shale production the ostensible target. If the standoff continues, however, the price war might ultimately do more harm to the Saudi and Russian economies. With increasing uncertainty about the depth of Coronavirus’ impact on global growth, the price war might also contribute to a sharp decline in the global economy. Helima Croft, David L. Goldwyn, Jean-Francois Seznec, Anders Aslund, and Randolph Bell discuss ongoing market volatility, the origins of the crisis, what’s next for US shale, and the implications of it all for energy and geopolitics

Coronavirus Energy & Environment

UkraineAlert

Mar 10, 2020

Coronavirus crisis: Ukraine needs IMF support not political purges

By Anders Åslund

President Zelenskyy's sudden purge of his reformist cabinet has shaken confidence in the Ukrainian economy at a time when global markets are facing a mounting coronavirus crisis - could an IMF deal be the solution?

Coronavirus International Financial Institutions

Anders Åslund was a resident senior fellow in the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. He also teaches at Georgetown University. He is a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia, Ukraine, and East Europe.

Dr. Åslund has served as an economic adviser to several governments, notably the governments of Russia (1991-94) and Ukraine (1994-97). He is chairman of the Advisory Council of the Center for Social and Economic Research, Warsaw, and of the Scientific Council of the Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition. He has published widely and is the author of fifteen books, most recently Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (YUP, 2019) and with Simeon Djankov, Europe’s Growth Challenge (OUP, 2017) and Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It (2015). Other books of his are How Capitalism Was Built (CUP, 2013) and Russia’s Capitalist Revolution (2007). He has also edited sixteen books.

Previously, he worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of East European Economics. He served as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Poland, Geneva, and Moscow. He earned his PhD from Oxford University.