US Mining Plan Will Sacrifice Mexico’s Environment for Weapons and Tech

A new mining agreement provides no benefits for Mexico and fails to address health and environmental impacts.

By Tamara Pearson , 

Truthout

PublishedApril 18, 2026

The Autlán plant in Teziutlan, in the Sierra Norte, Puebla.Tamara Pearson


The U.S. and Mexico have established a mining agreement which has Indigenous and other residents of the Sierra Norte mountains, as well as activists around Mexico, worried.

Announced on February 4, the U.S.-Mexico Action Plan on Critical Minerals aims to guarantee the U.S.’s supply of minerals for its arms industry, technology like data centers and smartphones, and the so-called energy transition. It sets out price floors, identification of mining projects, geological mapping coordination, and mineral location identification for the U.S., but provides no benefits for Mexico and fails to address health and environmental impacts.

“They want us to show these gringo companies where the minerals are and then go and hand over everything, all without a fuss,” said Miguel Sánchez Olvera, a Totonac man from the Sierra Norte region who has been at the forefront of struggles that have expelled mines from the area. “That’s concerning, because where does it leave us, as Mexicans? Basically, they are going to keep stealing from us.”

Miguel Sánchez Olvera, a Totonac man and environment activist from the Sierra Norte, Puebla, speaking at a protest on March 22, 2026.Tamara Pearson

The beautiful Sierra Norte — teeming with rivers and sprawling forests, and where a majority of people speak Indigenous languages — has massive amounts of minerals that the U.S. has identified as “critical,” such as manganese, gold, silver, and copper.

According to NATO, manganese is one of 12 minerals critical for the weapons industry; it is used in submarines, fighter aircraft, tanks, and torpedoes. For Mexico, however, manganese is a source of distress before it is even processed. In the lush Sierra Norte cordillera, stark black mountains of manganese ore and slag piles are set off by smoking chimneys from a plant run by Autlán, a major Mexican mining company. Homes nearby are drenched in black stains. Residents describe mornings of black clouds along the ground and black dust covering their windows.

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Fifty-six residents of an Indigenous Oaxaca community face 200 trumped-up charges for resisting mining in their rivers. By Tamara Pearson , Truthout July 9, 2025

Autlán operates four electric furnaces in its Teziutlán plant to smelt manganese ore, producing ferroalloys. Manganese is also on the U.S.’s critical minerals list and aside from weapons, it is vital to batteries and other steel applications.

Homes in Teziutlan, right near the Autlán plant, are drenched in black soot from the plant.Tamara Pearson

Mexico as a whole is the top silver-producing country, and among the top producers of copper, lead, and zinc — all on the U.S.’s list. Silver is vital for new weapon systems, hypersonic missiles, bombs, fighter jets, satellites, torpedoes, radar systems, AI data centers, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure, and smartphones. Demand for copper for munitions is skyrocketing as the U.S. restocks its arsenal, and it is essential for armor and electronics. Copper supply problems can cause significant weapon production delays, and supply chain vulnerabilities for weapons manufacturers.

The U.S. is home to 6 of the top 10 global arms companies and 13 of the top 15 global tech companies. The White House’s 2027 budget includes over 18 billion U.S dollars for the Department of Defense to stockpile minerals that are critical to the military industry. That figure is up from the current 2 billion U.S. dollars.

A few days before the U.S.-Mexico plan was signed, the White House had also announced Project Vault, which will establish a public-private partnership to stockpile critical minerals for U.S. businesses. These moves “imply hyper-extractivism — or basically, renewed extractivism,” César Enrique Pineda, a researcher and professor of geopolitical and capitalist intersections with the environment at the José María Luis Mora Research Institute, told Truthout.

An Open-Pit Mine for the U.S.

Autlán is the largest manganese producer in Central and North America. Like other mining companies in Mexico, it exports much of what it produces, including to the U.S. In late March, the environmental protection agency Profepa temporarily shut down one of its furnaces in the Teziutlan plant after finding that it was operating without an emissions filter. Locals told Truthout they had complained about the resulting harsh black clouds for more than six months, but Autlán did nothing.

The Autlán plant in the Sierra Norte is located right in the center of the town of Teziutlan.Tamara Pearson

Autlán continues to accumulate massive mountains of slag rock, a byproduct of metal smelting, in open air. Exposed slag can release small particulates that can lead to respiratory or skin problems. Too much manganese in the body can affect the nervous system, and another potential component, hexavalent chromium, can cause cancer. Leachates — toxic liquid runoffs — spill onto nearby land and eventually into the water system.

Before the fourth furnace was shut down, Gisela Macias Dionisio, a local water activist with Servicios Ambientales Amelatzin Hualactoc, told Truthout, “the dust was like snow. You couldn’t even sweep it up. They tell us babies are being born with gestational cancer.”

“Nobody speaks up, nobody says anything out of fear. A doctor told me that 50 percent of his patients have cancer,” said another woman who lives just behind the mine but who requested anonymity out of fear. “My house is covered in black dust, even the dishes have black dust on them, the trees are covered in it too. Our fruit used to be nice and big and now it’s small and rots quickly. The sound (from the plant) never stops.”

Pollution Doesn’t Squash Mining Companies’ Excitement

Nevertheless, the Mexican government is already promoting the critical minerals action plan as an investment opportunity, and companies here are using the plan to demand relaxation of regulations. The mining industry chamber, Camimex, said it sees the U.S.’s focus on securing strategic minerals as a moment to push for mining interests after the reforming of the 2023 mining law, which was a result of years of movement struggle.

The law was “a historic achievement,” said Beatriz Olivera Villa, an industrial engineer and a founder of Cambiémosla Ya — a coalition of communities and organizations campaigning around the mining law. The reformed law made environmental assessments and informed consent from affected communities obligatory, “and now they aren’t handing out concessions, at least not like they used to,” she said.

Now, with the critical minerals action plan, “we’re worried, because the economy secretary [of Mexico] has been speaking with the mining companies … and they are talking about modernizing the mining law to recover the privileges they lost,” Olivera said. “With the demand for critical minerals … it seems like they would increase extraction at any cost.”

“Trump’s administration doesn’t just represent extractive capital, but also an authoritarian approach that disregards any kind of regulation. Therefore, we should expect significant pressure to ensure, at any cost and regardless of our laws, that the mining industry’s needs are met with this plan,” Pineda said.


Nobody Benefits From Weapons Except Weapons Companies


But while the mining industry is being heard, the mines bring no economic benefits to the country or to nearby communities.

“I very much doubt that Mexico would benefit economically from this plan because it has never been that way with mining projects. Extraction only contributes 0.9 percent to the GDP, for example,” said Olivera. “Mining represents just 0.66 percent of formal employment, and in terms of taxes, they contribute very little.” There are 22,247 active mining concessions in Mexico, with a total surface area of 10.2 million hectares, or 5.2 percent of Mexico’s territory

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The Autlán plant is located right in the center of the town of Teziutlan and within the lush Sierra Norte mountains.Tamara Pearson

“Towns like Guadalupe y Calvo in Chihuahua (state) are among the top producers of gold and silver, but it is one of the poorest towns in Mexico,” Olivera said. In Fresnillo, another top global silver producer, 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, and in Eduardo Neri, a key gold producer, 65 percent do. Across Mexico, mining regions have very high poverty rates, “and a lack of access to services like water or electricity,” she added.


“There is a militarization of these resources. The U.S. is considering securing minerals for war as part of its national security strategy.”

Meanwhile, arms producers are breaking revenue records, with 679 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Increased production requires more minerals. “There is a militarization of these resources. The U.S. is considering securing minerals for war as part of its national security strategy,” said Olivera.

And as minerals flow from Global South countries like Mexico to the Global North for manufacturing and sales, so do the profits. Mining took off “in an intense way” after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which served U.S. and Canadian markets, Olivera says, calling it a “legalized plundering.” In 2024, Mexico exported 42.3 billion U.S. dollars in minerals, making it the 24th-largest exporter. Its main destinations were the U.S. ($17.7 billion), China ($6.31 billion), and Spain ($4.58 billion). Mexico exports 70 to 80 percent of its copper production.


Mining’s Legacy of Environmental Disaster



The U.S.-Mexico action plan “benefits investors, but it doesn’t benefit us at all,” said Urbano Córdova Guerraas, a local resident and also a member of Servicios Ambientales Amelatzin Hualactoc as we chatted in a small eatery near the Autlán plant. To extract copious amounts of manganese, Autlán has destroyed whole mountain tops in nearby Hidalgo state, buying off local politicians in order to do so. In Zoquitlán, Autlán chopped down 77 hectares of forest for a hydroelectric plant.

Communities in the Sierra Norte have successfully resisted various hydroelectric, fracking, and mining projects in their region. In 2022, they managed to cancel mining concessions in Ixtacamaxtitlán, Cuetzalan, Tlatlauquitepec, and Yaonáhuac, including for the Canadian gold-mining company, Almaden Minerals. Sánchez, a member of the land movement Makxtum Kalaw Chuchutsipi (Everyone United as a People), along with various movements in the region, including Masuel Indigenous communities, shut down three of Autlán’s gold, silver, and copper concessions last year.

“Our territory isn’t a resource. It’s our body, our memory, our spirituality,” the Maseual Altepetajpianij Council wrote to the court at the end of their 11-year battle. The council, made up of 35 Indigenous and small-farmer communities in the Sierra Norte, defends the region against mines.

“(Autlán) had just finished the exploration stage and was about to start exploiting, but with the strength of women and men here, they left the Sierra very pissed off because they had bought 1,000 hectares of land,” said Sánchez.

Meanwhile, in the north of the country, the U.S. consul general in Mexico, Michelle Ward, visited the country’s Buenavista copper mine on March 25, stressing that it is one of the top copper mines globally. She said that with the joint action plan, the U.S. government wants to strengthen its presence in the region. Ward omitted that the mine was the site of Mexico’s worst environmental disaster, when in 2014, a leaching pool collapsed, spilling 40,000 cubic meters of copper sulfate into the Sonora River, eventually reaching wells that supplied the city of Hermosillo

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A Google Maps screenshot shows an aerial view of the Buenavista copper mine in Sonora, taken on March 27, 2026. At 93,706 hectares in size, it is almost as big as New York City, and has carved out a large chunk of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.Google Maps / Tamara Pearson

Over a decade later, according to Olivera, members of the Sonora River Basin Committee say “their demands haven’t been met and the damage hasn’t been repaired, the skin problems are ongoing due to high levels of arsenic. They’re still finding arsenic in their urine and blood.” Even before the spill, authorities had found copper, arsenic, aluminum, cadmium, iron, manganese, and lead in the water supply.

Pineda lists off more negative impacts from mines in Mexico, including displacement of communities, water scarcity, contamination of tributaries and aquifers, heavy metal contamination, health harm, and toxic dust. “These are not things you can negotiate with the mining companies. You can’t negotiate if water is contaminated or not … so communities typically demand the closure of mines,” he said.

To mine just one ounce of gold, 40 kilograms of explosives and 200,000 liters of water are used, and 650 kilograms of carbon dioxide are emitted.


Imposing Destruction



In order to operate without disruption, mining companies in Mexico are often involved in the disappearance of activists and with organized crime. The top minerals that attract organized crime groups are the same critical minerals that Mexico plans to supply to the U.S.

In 2022, Indigenous activists Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, who had opposed a Ternium mine, were forcibly disappeared; they are still missing. The year before, anti-mining activist Higinio Trinidad De la Cruz and another activist were kidnapped by organized crime members and told to stop their activism, then released. Trinidad De la Cruz was killed the following year.

Autlán too has reportedly used violence, intimidation, death threats, buying people off, sowing community division, and attacking activists — including burning a bus that activists were in after a protest against one of Autlán’s hydroelectric plants — in order to get its way. In 2018, Sergio Rivera Hernández disappeared after opposing Autlán’s Coyolapa-Atzalan hydroelectric project.

There is a similar logic of control in the U.S. plans to funnel Mexico’s critical minerals its way. “With this plan, the U.S. government is taking advantage of Mexico’s deep economic dependency on it in order to impose a new instrument of subordination,” wrote the Mexican Network of those Affected by Mining in a statement.

“Mexico isn’t in a position to negotiate on equal terms,” said Pineda. “This plan doesn’t just mean communities losing control over their ecosystems, but that the whole country loses control over its ecosystems.”

Of course, Mexico isn’t alone. The U.S. has made an alarming deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, exchanging “security” support for access to its minerals, while threatening to cut off Zambia’s aid if it doesn’t increase the U.S.’s mineral access. A trade deal with Indonesia in March also paves the way for the U.S.’s access to minerals, with few environmental safeguards.

“The environmental impact stays in the (Global) South, and the raw materials head to the North … at a scale that is unsustainable,” said Pineda.

Over the years, thousands of organized communities have declared themselves “mining-free territory” to legally prohibit mining in their territory.

Stopping mines after the fact is much harder, but many communities are willing to wage the legal and organizational battle. Even after victory, the struggle continues.

“We want to clean our rivers, so that the Sierra Norte de Puebla can be a paradise again,” said Sánchez.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.


Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican journalist, editor, activist and literary fiction author. Her latest novel is, The Eyes of the Earth, and she writes the Global South newsletter, Excluded Headlines.

The Geoeconomic Angle Of The Third Gulf War – Analysis

April 4, 2026 
Geopolitical Monitor
By Jose Miguel Alonso-Trabanco

As the testament of history teaches, there is no war that lacks an economic layer. Since the dawn of civilization, wars have been waged with economic assets and for the pursuit of economic relative gains. However, the conflict that is shaking West Asia, even more so than the Ukraine War, highlights the contemporary centrality of geoeconomics as the expansion of war through other means. Just like bombers, fighters and guided munitions serve in the kinetic battlespace, the weaponization of oil barrels, currencies, high-tech supply chains and commodities is at the forefront of this confrontation.
The Weaponization of Complex Interdependence

Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan explained that, as narrow chokepoints, mastery over straits matters for both commerce and naval power projection. With selective interdiction in the strait of Hormuz through drones, naval mines and missiles, Iran has triggered a geoeconomic earthquake. This measure, likely inspired by the instructive lessons of both the Suez crisis and the Arab oil embargo, is meant to strangle both Gulf petro-monarchies and oil importers in Washington’s politico-strategic orbit. At gunpoint, these states are being pushed to convince the Americans to seek a negotiated settlement that restores economic normalcy before their energy security is compromised any further.

As an additional externality, volatility in international oil markets has the critical mass to trigger recessions. In the highly sensitive realm of international finance, the resonance of the Third Gulf War has provoked losses worth at least 2.5 trillion dollars. In a macroeconomic environment underpinned by systemic financialization, mounting panic in Wall Street, stock exchanges, capital markets, and the elite corporate boardrooms of investment banks foreshadows both stagflation and political trouble.

For Iranian statecraft, this de facto blockade is not just a powerful asymmetric equalizer, but also a money-making machine. The fees charged by Iranian toll booths for safe passage (reportedly, $2 million per ship) bolster Tehran’s war chest. On the other hand, although Tehran does not intend to target partners like China and India (buyers of Iranian oil), both Beijing and Delhi are being indirectly pressured to broker a ceasefire through diplomatic solutions.


Based on the fundamentals of connectivity wars, Iranian reactive countermeasures have been masterminded to maximize the impact of ripple effects on global supply chains. Attacks against regional gas fields have partially disabled power grids that fuel energy-intensive aluminium refining facilities. The resulting shortages will disrupt worldwide industrial production in sophisticated sectors such as aerospace and car-making. Considering its dual-use applications, aluminium is officially classified by the United States as a critical metal for national security and defense. The Iranian chokehold is also curtailing the exports of Saudi and Qatari nitrogen-based fertilizers (derived from hydrocarbons) to the wider world. The resulting bottleneck is causing disturbances such as rising prices and diminishing output. Far from being only a transitory macroeconomic problem for individual farms and agribusinesses, such a disruption endangers global food security in both developed and underdeveloped nations. Since the Middle East provides roughly a third of the world’s total fertilizer supply, in the worst-case scenario of a protracted conflict, the prospect of famines is not unrealistic. Iranian attacks against major regional desalination plants follow a similar politico-strategic logic.

The US is partially shielded from this disruption thanks to self-sufficiency in oil supplies as a result of fracking and the availability of a formidable strategic petroleum reserve. However, the political will and the material capacity of the US to reopen Hormuz and restore freedom of navigation, the backbone of free trade as an international public good, are now being questioned. By targeting the keystones of the US-centric global economic order, Iran is arguably playing with fire, but this West Asian state has no interest in the preservation of an international commercial, financial, and monetary regime from which it has been excluded. Aware of this dwindling commitment to the preservation of open sea lanes, both US partners and adversaries are recalculating accordingly.

Taking Hormuz would give the Trump administration the opportunity to hold China’s energy supplies hostage to US strategic control. However, the facts on the ground suggest that removing this de facto blockade, let alone a full-fledged seizure of the Iranian oil industry, is a challenging endeavor for the Pentagon, even with boots on the ground.

Failure to reopen the strait of Hormuz would evoke the humbling withdrawal of British forces from Suez as a breaking point in the global balance of power. Iranian forces do not need to sink a US aircraft carrier, only to embrace strategic patience and resistance in order to weaponize time until the Americans, frustrated with the elusiveness of a quick victory, decide to call it a day and cut losses before things get uglier with the breakout of a land war and the ensuing carnage. For example, even though Richelovian France was behind the much richer but overstretched and heavily indebted Habsburg Empire, it managed to turn the tables through attrition, diplomatic intrigue, selective harassment, and proxy wars until the Austrian monarchy ended up in an irreversible bankruptcy. Yet this risky gamble will falter if the Iranian war effort crumbles first due to an economic implosion. Whereas the rial is on life support, Iranian industrial infrastructure is being incapacitated, and the Iranian social compact is severely strained.

For Israel, chaos in the Persian Gulf brings opportunities to promote oil and gas pipelines connecting the Arabian peninsula with Israeli ports such as Eilat and Haifa. Regardless of the outcome of the ongoing conflict, these alternative networks would bypass territories and waterways under Iranian suzerainty. If such projects ever come to fruition, Jerusalem would develop leverage over European energy security. If European states want a reliable supply of Middle Eastern fossil fuels, then their foreign policies would have to defer to Israel’s strategic national interests.

Myths and Political Realities of Sanctions

Iran is one of the most heavily sanctioned economies. These unilateral coercive measures were implemented by the US to force Tehran to freeze the development of its nuclear program. Under pressure, the Iranians engaged the Americans and other counterparts under the frame of the JCPOA. Yet, aside from the exchange of empty diplomatic niceties, these negotiations did not deliver substantive breakthroughs. The Iranians did not abandon their dual-use nuclear program, and the Americans did not lift any sanctions or restored Iranian access to payments networks like SWIFT. In parallel, Iran felt undeterred by their enforcement. Iran, inspired by Shiite revolutionary zeal and the legacy of the Persian imperial tradition, tried to forge a Shiite Crescent as the crux of Iranian regional hegemony. In order to further resilience and overcome the impact of Western sanctions, Iranian economic statecraft relied on the reorientation of its economic exchanges with Asia and the circuits of decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Even after setbacks for Iran’s regional influence and under the pressure of Israeli-American airstrikes and a relentless campaign of targeted assassinations, Tehran remains defiant and such an attitude seems to be paying off. Under the pressure of Iranian asymmetric tactics of economic warfare, the Trump administration has responded with the temporary suspension of sanctions on seaborne Iranian crude exports. This extraordinary measure, unthinkable barely one year ago, reflects mounting concerns surrounding instability in oil markets and surging prices. Without the availability of Iranian petroleum, the economic and financial fallout of the war may escalate further. In public, Iranian government officials have downplayed the benefits of this unexpected decision. Behind closed doors, they are surely learning that sanctions imposed by an adversarial great power can be challenged with a combination of chutzpah, expedient opportunism, and sabre-rattling.

The Promised Land of Start-Up Mercantilism versus Shiite Economic Resistance

The conflict between Israel and Iran is, aside from an interstate war, a confrontation between two systems of political economy, neither of which follows the theoretical roadmap of free trade. Instead, both Israel and Iran have neo-mercantilist models, but their recipes differ. Unlike other Middle Eastern economies, Israel has no abundance of natural resources, but this Levantine state has a qualified, multicultural and business-savvy human capital. Under these conditions, Israel has managed to sculpt, through a synergic partnership between the state and the private sector, an economy focused on start-up capitalism. Whereas the state lays the groundwork for a prosperous business environment, private companies conquer markets through the deployment of goods and services with added value. This hybrid blends intrepid entrepreneurship, advanced technologies, intensive R&D, world-class expertise, spillovers, and dual-use innovations. For example, Unit 8200 is not just involved in SIGINT tasks and cyber-warfare, it also operates as a cradle in which high-tech scalable commercial solutions are incubated. As a result, Israel is positioned as the world’s eighth most complex economy. Israeli leadership in biotechnology and diamond-cutting embodies this sophistication.

Israel has built a state-of-the-art military complex which manufactures assault rifles, tanks, intelligence software, and UAVs. Although the top-notch materiel is usually reserved for the IDF, competitive surpluses are exported to various foreign destinations. Israel’s complex economy has proved to be resilient thanks to the best practice derived from strategic intelligence and business continuity plans, but the ongoing war represents a major challenge for the pillars of this economic model. For example, the exodus of Israelis—especially amongst secular and highly educated citizens— as a result of war fatigue, economic disruptions, theocratic tendencies, and psychological exhaustion is encouraging an incremental “brain drain.” For these people, despite their ideological affinity to the Jewish state, the loss of prosperity is a deal breaker. Another weakness is that Israel’s high-tech arsenal needs imported hardware made by foreign companies, including American F35 fighter jets and German diesel-electric submarines. Although pro-Israeli governments are in charge of both Washington and Berlin, the automatic continuity of this proclivity must not be taken for granted, especially as long-term generational shifts reshape foreign policy attitudes.

In contrast, the Iranian model of state-led capitalism, under external pressure, seeks national resilience as a necessity for statecraft rather than shared profits or competitiveness. Tehran’s policy of “economic resistance” is based on national security considerations and the preservation of internal political stability. Despite having the world’s ninth largest pool of STEM graduates, Iran is far behind Israel in economic complexity. Yet Iranian statesmen think that the country does not need to be rich to satisfy its politico-strategic imperatives. This logic explains why strategic and lucrative sectors of the Iranian economy are in the hands of IRGC generals. The spectrum of such a military control over the Iranian system of political economy includes oil, construction, banking, agriculture, industrial manufacturing, tourism, real estate and even black markets. This scheme is not random. As in the cases of Cuba, Egypt, North Korea, and Pakistan, the IRGC Inc empire has been engineered to ensure the loyalty of this military elite with the carrots of economic rewards. IRGC senior commanders have therefore little incentives to stage a coup that would jeopardize access to sources of wealth. In addition, Tehran has prioritized industries whose output strengthens national power (such as aerospace and nuclear power) rather than marketable goods. Based on this rationale, Iran —deprived of access to Western conventional weapons and distrustful of alternative suppliers like the Russians— has nurtured the development of an indigenous military industrial complex which, despite existing limitations, produces Shahed kamikaze drones, ballistic missiles, and satellites.

Iranian “economic resistance” is also aligned with the doctrinal tenets of Shia Islam. For Shiites, the endurance of hardship, as a hallmark of righteousness, leads to virtue. The removal of US sanctions would be very much welcome by the Iranian business community as a sign of relief. Unsurprisingly, the so-called “bazaaris” (heirs of the Persian merchant tradition that goes back to the ancient “silk road”) are unhappy with the country’s leadership due to rising prices, commercial disruptions and wildly fluctuating exchange rates. Nevertheless, despite this discontent, the Iranian state has adapted through asymmetric tactics, partly thanks to the abundance of oil and natural gas. For example, since Iran cannot freely export petroleum to the rest of the world, these energy resources have been invested in large-scale cryptocurrency mining farms. Such a process enables the ‘alchemical’ transmutation of energy into digital money through nonstate blockchain-based networks whose geometries are, to a certain extent, sanctions-proof. Regional partners, like Georgia, have also provided additional lifelines.

Petrodollar Warfare

The Third Gulf War has ambivalent ramifications for the dollar’s hegemony as dominant reserve currency. In the short term, systemic uncertainty and higher prices in oil markets are encouraging importers to reinforce their reliance on dollar-denominated assets and arteries, at the expense of secondary hard currencies like the euro or the yen. From the perspective of Iranian economic statecraft, attacking the energy infrastructure of GCC members and the asphyxiation of the Hormuz Strait targets the cornerstone of the petro-dollar recycling system. The Gulf states, in exchange for US security guarantees, invest the proceeds of their oil exports in dollar-denominated assets. Tehran is weakening both the transactional commitment of the US military to the military protection of regional Arab partners and the incentives of these petro-monarchies to rely on the US as a trustworthy sentinel of the Middle Eastern status quo. Under Iranian pressure, systemic uncertainty and a multipolar correlation of forces, these states are being pushed to abandon Washington’s strategic orbits to pursue more diversified collective security mechanisms. Apparently, Tehran is also brandishing the Hormuz crisis to advance de-dollarization of its oil sales by embracing the yuan as an alternative settlement currency.

Although the Suez crisis spelled the death knell of the pound sterling as the world’s supreme reserve currency, it is unlikely that this measure will cross the greenback’s event horizon beyond the point of no return. The Iranians, despite their combativeness, lack the financial firepower that the Americans had when they threatened to sink the British currency or to put in motion a cascading domino effect. However, this ‘currency war’ can accelerate existing structural trends that herald the genesis of a new multipolar monetary order in which the centrality of the US dollar is diminished. In hindsight, future historians will discuss how the proliferation of high-intensity economic warfare hastened the dollar’s decline (and fall?).

High-Tech Geoeconomics

Digital code, now mightier than the sword, is reprogramming the operational grammar of warfare in theatres of engagement shaped by both complex interdependence and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As a lab, the Iran war gives a glimpse of what a high-tech geoeconomic battlefield looks like. In this regard, advanced technologies are heavily reliant on material inputs and a supporting infrastructure. Hence, the shockwaves of the war are problematic for energy-intensive AI models whose functionality requires affordable, stable, and reliable sources of fossil fuels. This need will grow even more, as AI platforms are structurally embedded, as digital infrastructure, to major governmental and corporate nerve centers. These considerations are driving the US scramble to secure access to overseas oil reserves, and to prevent Chinese competitors from overtaking US national champions in the race for AI superiority.

Furthermore, the historical record will remember the Iran War as the first conflict in which data centers were attacked by both sides. These nodes have been added to the belligerents’ banks of targets because, in the so-called “information age” they underpin telecom, financial services, e-commerce platforms, public utilities, and even military preparedness. US forces have used both Palantir and Claude to process data for the enhancement of intelligence tasks and battlefield performance. This AI-driven war will reinforce the symbiotic covenant between the US defense establishment and Silicon Valley as an oligopolistic high-tech cluster. Although Israel has wielded AI-tools that maximize enemy casualties in Gaza (such as Habsora and Lavender), it is unknown if these assets are being used over Iranian skies to increase the lethality of its fighters, UAVs, and smart projectiles.


Despite being behind the US and Israel in military-grade AI operating systems, Iran has diagnosed the condition of AI infrastructure networks as centers of gravity and Achilles’ heels worth undermining. Iranian forces have hit Amazon data centers in the UAE and Bahrain. And it looks like Tehran also intends to strike regional nodes of tech companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle and Palantir because of their close organic connections to US and Israeli national security ecosystems. This trend will encourage the securitization of data centers as strategic hardware and the development of ad-hoc public-private partnerships for their protection. They also highlight their incremental centrality for modern-day smart warfare, as well as their exposure as legitimate targets of kinetic attacks.

Finally, since helium is produced on a large scale in Qatar as a byproduct of natural gas processing, the Iran war is compressing the global supply of this gaseous chemical element, especially considering its complicated storage and transportation logistics. Helium is a strategic input for advanced manufacturing in applications related to semiconductors, chipmaking, cooling systems, fiber optics, photolithography, and satellites. Without helium, the progression of Industry 4.0 will be slower. Despite its outward ethereal appearance, the cloud is anchored to the worldly political economy of natural resources. The fateful principles of “historical security materialism” remain valid in the digital age.

Concluding Remarks

Shifts in the structural architecture of world order, usually as a result of major war, and systemic economic transitions are two sides of the same coin. The Third Gulf War is no hegemonic confrontation fought between peer competitors, but this asymmetric clash may potentially reshuffle not just the balance of power in West Asia. The threshold of the conflict has escaped the domain of conventional Clausewitzian operations. The resulting devastation is being amplified by the frontline deployment of economic weapons and the destruction of economic targets. Contrary to what neoclassical economists and liberal internationalists prophesied about a ‘Pax Mercatoria’ as a harbinger of stability, prosperity, and restraint, the grammar of economic exchanges has been swallowed by the politico-strategic logic of war. Money, commerce, high-tech and natural resources —as instruments of power projection in warfare— are too important to be left exclusively in the hands of traders, corporate executives, and financiers. In the heartland of ancient Persia, the lines in the sand of West Asia’s geoeconomic map are being redrawn.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

Geopoliticalmonitor.com is an open-source intelligence collection and forecasting service, providing research, analysis and up to date coverage on situations and events that have a substantive impact on political, military and economic affairs.

The Permian Is Drowning in Its Own Wastewater

By Irina Slav - Dec 29, 2025

• The Permian basin's massive oil production from hydraulic fracturing generates huge amounts of wastewater, and the industry is running out of safe places to dispose of it.
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• The Texas Railroad Commission has restricted new disposal wells due to widespread increases in reservoir pressure, leading to drilling hazards, ground deformation, and seismic activity.
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• Potential solutions, such as treating the water for release into rivers, face regulatory hurdles and would add significant, unwelcome costs to producers operating below $60 per barrel West Texas Intermediate.

The Permian Basin is the largest contributor to U.S. oil production, accounting for nearly half of total production in both 2024 and 2025. But success comes at a price, and in the Permian’s case, the price is huge amounts of wastewater—and the industry is running out of places to store it.

Hydraulic fracturing, which is the dominant way of extracting oil in the Permian, is a water-intensive process. Fracking involves injecting chemicals and sand into the horizontal well to open up the oil-bearing rock and keep it open. The longer the laterals got, the more water needed to be injected. This water, which is mixed with chemicals, then gets disposed of in special wells. But there are too many of those, and they are overflowing, according to reports.

The first signs of serious trouble emerged earlier this year, when the Texas Railroad Commission sent out notices to companies applying for licenses for wastewater disposal wells in the basin, stating that there were ground pressure issues caused by wastewater disposal. The number of new ones was to be restricted.

Wastewater disposal, the Railroad Commission wrote in the letters sent out in May, “has resulted in widespread increases in reservoir pressure that may not be in the public interest and may harm mineral and freshwater resources in Texas.” The RRC added that “Drilling hazards, hydrocarbon production losses, uncontrolled flows, ground surface deformation, and seismic activity have been observed.”

It is difficult to find a solution to this problem without compromising oil production, and while local communities may not have a big problem with that, the industry will. So decision-makers in relevant positions are considering options. One of these, per a recent Bloomberg report, is releasing the water—after treating it—into local rivers. 

The report cited regulatory filings concerning the issue of permits to energy companies to treat their wastewater and then release it into the Pecos River near New Mexico. Texas Pacific Land Corp. and NGL Energy Partners were two of the companies named as potential receivers of such a permit. At least one of these could be awarded by the end of March 2026, the Bloomberg report also said, citing Texas Pacific Land Corp.

If the wastewater problem is to be solved, however, more such permits would be needed—unless opposition to them emerges and spreads. There is also the issue of additional costs, Bloomberg noted. Treating the water to make it of suitable quality to be poured into a river would add to oil producers’ costs, and this is not the time to have more costs pile up for most producers, with West Texas Intermediate firmly below $60 per barrel. What’s more, Bloomberg reports that the safety of the whole procedure of releasing treated water into rivers has not yet been confirmed.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has already signaled it will not be handing out wastewater-to-river permits like candy. The watchdog told Bloomberg it was monitoring the water quality at four locations along the Pecos River and two locations in its Red Bluff Reservoir—while considering the first of those permits.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that while regulators are looking for solutions to the wastewater problem, pressure is building in the rock, suggesting it may come to affect production. There is so much wastewater across the Permian that it is moving into old wellbores, causing geysers that cost a lot to clean up, the publication said, adding that pressure in injection reservoirs in some parts of the Permian has reached 0.7 pounds per square inch per foot. This is 0.2 pounds higher than the threshold over which liquid can flow up to the surface and potentially affect drinking water.

The Wall Street Journal noted that drillers in the Delaware Basin are pumping between 5 and 6 barrels of fluid for every barrel of oil they recover. That, it appears, is a lot, and the practice, as suggested by these reports, is unsustainable. The current solutions also appear to be falling short, mostly consisting of switching from deep disposal wells to shallower ones to avoid changes in seismic activity, as reported by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The shallow disposal wells have fixed the seismic problem and are currently receiving three-quarters of all wastewater produced in the Permian, the WSJ reported, noting, like Bloomberg, the unwanted water geysers that the migrating water is causing. One of these costs $2.5 million to plug, with the Texas Railroad Commission also shutting the injection wells that it suspected were leading to leaks, the Wall Street Journal wrote.

Meanwhile, the industry is trying to fortify its wells against wastewater seeping from injection wells, which also leads to additional costs. “Bit by bit, it adds cost, it adds complexity, it adds mechanical challenges,” one Chevron executive told the WSJ. On top of this, the wastewater is seeping into the oil and gas reservoirs, and there seems little that anyone can do about it except spend more to remove it. The issue with excess wastewater in Texas remains a challenge to an industry that is pumping almost half of the nation’s oil.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com 

Geothermal Power Emerges as Trump’s Favorite Clean Energy

FRACKING BY ANY OTHER NAME

By Felicity Bradstock - Oct 12, 2025

• Geothermal energy remains one of the few renewable sources still supported by the Trump administration, benefiting from Biden-era incentives and bipartisan backing.
• 
  
• Innovative firms like Fervo Energy and Sage Geothermal are pioneering advanced extraction methods that boost efficiency and expand geothermal access beyond traditional hotspots.
• 
  
• Major collaborations and endorsements - from Ormat and Baker Hughes to Bill Gates - are propelling geothermal toward large-scale commercialization across the U.S.
• 
  

One of the few renewable energy sources that the Trump administration has not yet criticised is geothermal power, as companies across the United States continue to develop innovative geothermal projects with financial support from Biden-era policies. The sweeping budget legislation that President Trump signed in July preserved most key tax credits for geothermal power. Bipartisan support has encouraged several energy companies and startups to invest heavily in research and development into advanced geothermal operations in recent years, with promising results, giving hope for future clean energy production.

People have been tapping into geothermal energy from natural heat sources worldwide for centuries. Over the last fifty years, energy companies have tapped into geothermal sources using machinery to access harder-to-reach reserves. To achieve this, companies drill a borehole up to several kilometres deep, where the rocks are around 200°C, and inject water and sand at high pressure. This creates fractures in the rocks, which increases their permeability and produces a reservoir of hot water that can be extracted via a second borehole for the water to be used to generate electricity.

Geothermal energy contributes just 0.4 percent of the U.S. energy mix, largely due to technological and geographical constraints to accessing geothermal reservoirs. Existing plants depend on naturally occurring reservoirs of hot water and steam, in regions such as Northern California and Nevada, to power turbines and generate power. However, companies are now exploring new ways to access geothermal resources using techniques developed for oil fracking and innovative new methods to reach harder-to-access reservoirs in unconventional regions.

Sage Geothermal is now using heat and pressure to generate more power than conventional extraction methods through its cycle-based heat recovery approach. The company’s CEO, Cindy Taff, told Forbes, “By using the natural elasticity of the rock, we can bring hot water to the surface without pumps. Unlike traditional approaches, we maintain pressure in the system rather than venting it at the surface, and we hold open fractures with pressure instead of adding bridging materials like sand or proppant. These innovations reduce friction and energy losses, boosting net power output by 25 to 50 percent compared to other next-generation geothermal technologies.”

In August, Sage announced it was partnering with the international geothermal energy developer Ormat Technologies to roll out its next-generation technology at an Ormat facility in either Nevada or Utah. This is expected to help Sage speed up the development of its first commercial power-generation facility by around two years. Taff said, “For us, the ability to scale faster with Ormat is huge… But it’s also a great opportunity for Ormat to reach a deeper [geothermal] resource than what they’re targeting now.”

Related: Don’t Mess with Texas: Organized Oilfield Theft Triggers Statewide Response

In September, Sage signed an agreement with the geothermal startup Fervo Energy to advance their geothermal activities. The two companies have both invested heavily in research and development into alternative geothermal extraction methods and could work together to advance this work. Fervo recently signed a deal with tech giant Google to provide it with clean power, while Sage has completed an agreement with Meta.

Houston-headquartered Fervo Energy was approved to deploy 2 GW of geothermal power in Beaver County, Utah, by the Department of the Interior last year, with its facility set to begin generating power in 2026. The company uses an Enhanced Geothermal Systems (ESG) proprietary technology to drill horizontally into geothermal reservoirs, allowing it to access multiple wells from a single location and showing promise for greater unconventional geothermal energy generation.

In September, the energy technology company Baker Hughes was contracted by Fervo Energy to supply equipment for five of its power plants in the Cape Station project in Utah. The plants are expected to produce 300 MW of electricity once fully operational, enough to power about 180,000 homes. Baker Hughes will supply engineering and manufacturing equipment as well as turboexpanders and the BRUSH Power Generation generator.

The firm’s CEO, Lorenzo Simonelli, said, “Geothermal power is one of several renewable energy sources expanding globally and proving to be a vital contributor to advancing sustainable energy development. “By working with a leader like Fervo Energy and leveraging our comprehensive portfolio of technology solutions, we are supporting the scaling of lower-carbon power solutions that are integral to meet growing global energy demand.”

In September, Bill Gates visited Fervo Energy’s Cape Station project alongside Senator John Curtis. He described the company’s horizontal drilling method as a “truly innovative approach” and discussed the role companies like Fervo will play in maintaining America’s energy independence. The founder of tech giant Microsoft said, “Geothermal is one of the most promising ways to deliver clean energy that’s reliable and affordable.”

As the outlook for renewable energy in the United States becomes more uncertain, following the Trump administration's attacks on solar and wind power, the geothermal energy sector appears to have maintained the backing of the government as several companies continue to expand operations. Investments in innovative geothermal extraction technologies show great promise for the commercial rollout of new operations across the country. 

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

 MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Chevron Completes Hess Acquisition, Including Offshore Guyana Stake

The Exxon-operated FPSO One Guyana (Exxon file image)

Published Jul 20, 2025 3:02 PM by The Maritime Executive

 \

Despite objections from ExxonMobil, Chevron has completed its planned acquisition of privately-held rival Hess, including a 30 percent stake in Exxon's lucrative Stabroek Block developments off Guyana. 

Exxon attempted to block the Hess acquisition by filing an arbitration case through the International Chamber of Commerce. Hess's contract for the ownership of the Stabroek Block lease included a clause providing right of first refusal to Exxon in the event of a sale of Hess' stake; Exxon insisted that this clause applied in the event of the sale of Hess itself. Chevron disagreed, and acrgued

On Friday morning, Exxon lost its arbitral case, and Chevron completed the process of closing on the acquisition of Hess within four hours of the arbitration panel's announcement. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth celebrated the win, thanking the arbitral panel for recognizing the "longstanding practice and understanding that asset-level rights of first refusal do not apply in parent company merger and acquisition transactions."

Exxon has accepted the reality that - despite its objections - Chevron is its new business partner in the Stabroek Block project. "We disagree with the ICC panel’s interpretation but respect the arbitration and dispute resolution process," Exxon said in a statement. "We welcome Chevron to the venture and look forward to continued industry-leading performance and value creation in Guyana."

The Stabroek Block is one of the world's most promising offshore finds, and is a powerhouse behind Exxon's profit margins. The IEA predicts that it will singlehandedly produce one percent of the world's oil in future years. Even with the high cost of offshore operations, the first four Stabroek FPSOs will produce oil at a breakeven cost of less than $35 per barrel, according to independent estimates - meaning that even in an era of low oil prices, the projects will still be profitable. 

Chevron Completes Hess Megadeal After Winning Guyana Arbitration

By Michael Kern - Jul 18, 2025

Chevron Corporation said on Friday it had completed the $53-billion acquisition of Hess Corporation after winning an arbitration case against Exxon over the Guyana assets of Hess.  

In 2023, Chevron proposed a $53-billion deal to buy Hess Corp and thus take Hess’s assets in the Bakken in North Dakota and the 30% stake in Guyana’s Stabroek offshore oil field—a top-performing asset with the potential to yield even more barrels and billions of U.S. dollars for the project’s partners. 

Exxon is the operator of the Stabroek block with a 45% stake. Hess held 30%, and China’s state firm CNOOC has the remaining 25% stake. 

Proceeds for the consortium, which is already pumping more than 660,000 barrels per day (bpd) from several projects in the block, are rising with growing production, even at relatively lower oil prices, because the Guyana block is estimated to have a breakeven oil price of about $30 per barrel.  

Chevron’s bid to buy Hess’s stake in the Guyana projects was challenged by Exxon and CNOOC, who claim they have a right of first refusal for Hess’s stake under the terms of a joint operating agreement (JOA) for the Stabroek block. Hess and Chevron claimed the JOA doesn’t apply to a case of a proposed full corporate merger.   

The dispute went to arbitration, which ruled in favor of Chevron, the company said today, announcing the completion of the Hess acquisition, “following the satisfaction of all necessary closing conditions, including a favorable arbitration outcome regarding Hess’ offshore Guyana asset.” 

Chevron now owns a 30% position in the Guyana Stabroek Block, which has more than 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent discovered recoverable resource. 

In addition, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Friday lifted its earlier restriction, clearing the way for John Hess to join Chevron’s Board of Directors, subject to Board approval. 

“The combination enhances and extends our growth profile well into the next decade, which we believe will drive greater long-term value to shareholders,” said Mike Wirth, Chevron chairman and CEO.  

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com 

Do Upstream Mergers Really Deliver Value for Shareholders?

By David Messler - Jul 17, 2025

• The article questions whether large M&A transactions in the E&P sector consistently translate into tangible shareholder value, despite initial promises of immediate accretion and synergies.
• 
  
• The ExxonMobil acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources is examined as a case study, highlighting the industrial logic behind the deal but also pointing out the lack of immediate financial benefits for ExxonMobil shareholders, such as increased stock price or EPS accretion.
• 
  
• The author suggests that while M&A may offer long-term benefits in terms of scale and sustainability for companies, the short-term impact on shareholder returns often appears negligible or even negative, describing it as a "shell game" for investors.
• 
  

I've been noodling around with an idea for a while now. The thing on my mind is when do investors actually gain from the big gobs of money E&P companies spend on M&A? A lot of promises are made in the early days. But as time wears on, I rarely see any effort made to reconcile results with these promises. So bear with me as I go through this little exercise. 

Now I am not saying that M&A isn't necessary as strong companies buy out smaller, weaker companies to get their premium assets. That part of the transaction is easily understood, and I will review that thought in the ExxonMobil/Pioneer Natural Resources case as we go through this exercise. My point here is investors are still waiting for these results to show up in their mail box. In fairness, not a lot time has elapsed, but I think trends are instructive. Let's dive in.

Upstream M&A: Shell game?

The upstream industry has been on a buying binge the last several years with hundreds of billions worth of transactions on the books. One of the most notable thus far has been ExxonMobil’s (NYSE:XOM) acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources, for approximately $253 per share or a substantial $64.5 billion, including debt, in an all-stock transaction. As noted in the deal slide from the announcement, this was an 18% premium to recent pricing for Pioneer. In exchange for XOM diluting current holders of its stock by about 255 mm shares or ~6%, the company made some firm promises in regard to the future upside for the combined company. Among other things XOM holders were told the transaction would be “immediately accretive to EPS.” Hold that thought.

Some time has gone by since the deal closed in May of 2024 and it seemed appropriate to peek under the hood to see how the company was delivering on these commitments. It’s also worth reviewing just what drove Exxon’s interest in paying a premium to Pioneer to obtain their Midland acreage.

The Industrial Logic of ExxonMobil and Pioneer

Industrial logic is the term applied to these mega deals. It’s one of the terms, along with synergy and accretive, that are bandied about on announcement day. As you can see below, Pioneer’s Midland basin acreage was like a missing puzzle piece to Exxon’s prior footprint in the play. Exxon is a technology company with a track record of pushing the envelope to drive down costs and increase production, but to fully deploy their technical expertise, they needed more room.

When you snap the two pieces together, you get a blocky, connected plot of land that runs for 50-75 miles east and west, and the better part of a couple of hundred miles north and south. 1.4 million acres is a sizeable chunk of dirt. That’s significant and opens the door to huge numbers of 4-5 mile laterals, with centralized logistics, sand, water, the stuff of fracking, and helping lock-in low cost of supply. The easy stuff put in place, XOM engineers are free to work their magic wringing maximum barrels out of each foot of completed interval. That’s all great for the company, but does this add to the value of the company in a way that benefits shareholders? Something real, and tangible that they can spend. Today. Like the stock price going up. Or special dividends. It seems like it should, and that’s where we will look next for any sign the company is about to embark on an enhanced shareholder rewards package. 

Capitalization is one metric by which we might judge the impact of a transaction. Suppose company A, worth X, buys company Z, worth Y. In that case, logic suggests that company AZ should match the value of the two merger partners, or X + Y. Referring back to our ExxonMobil example, on May 2nd, the day before the merger closed the share price of XOM was $116.21 per share. With 3,998,000,000 shares outstanding that works out to a capitalization of $462 bn. At the agreed price of $253 per share for Pioneer their capitalization was $59.5 bn. The two together should have created an entity worth $521 bn, a point from which the merger driven success of the company should have been a  value accretion launching pad. By the end of 2024 XOM stock was trading at $107.27. With 4,424 bn shares outstanding the company’s capitalization stood at $474 bn. In about six months, some $47 bn in capitalization had vanished into thin air.

Investors were promised the transaction would be immediately accretive to earnings per share. In June, 2024 reporting for the second quarter showed EPS to be $2.14 per share. For the fourth quarter EPS was $1.67 per share. So no immediate accretion. Perhaps patience will pay off. For the first quarter of 2025 EPS was $1.76 per share and the forecast for Q-2 is $1.55 share. One step forward and another back. What matters is that, thus far the combined company has not equaled its standalone performance. This is a sobering thought in light of the dilution visited upon shareholders, and the expense the company is going to repurchase shares.

Related: Goldman: The Boom Years of U.S. Oil Output Growth Are Over

I may be piling on a bit here as the time elapsed since the merger is minimal. ROCE or Return on Capital Employed, shows little sign of being moved significantly higher in the merger. For a Twelve-Trailing Month-TTM period, Exxon’s ROCE was 0.10882, a slight improvement from Full Year-2024’s 0.1082. Moving in the right direction, but after spending $64.5 bn in stock dilution, one might hope for a teensy bit more. Like I said, perhaps not enough time has gone by to attach much weight to the change in ROCE.

Summing up

So, where does that leave us as we eagerly anticipate another mega merger? I refer, of course, to the one that now hangs in the balance for Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and Hess (NYSE:HES), with an arbitrator set to rule on XOM’s claim of primacy in the pre-emptive right to buy HESS’ share in the Stabroek field, offshore Guyana. If we buy into CVX today it will cost us $150 per share. If the arbitrator rules in their favor and the assets of Hess are merged into CVX, will the price of CVX then become X+Y-dilution? Or the CVX price plus the Hess price of $171 per share, less the amount of stock CVX will print~$351 mm shares to meet the deal price of $60 bn? Will the combined company have a capitalization of $327 bn? If history is any guide this outcome is unlikely.

It is certainly food for thought as another serial acquirer comes to mind. I refer here to Occidental Petroleum, (NYSE: OXY), which after the Anadarko deal of 2019 for $57 bn, and then the CrownRock deal of 2024 for $12 bn- a combined cash and stock outlay of $69 bn for a company with a present day capitalization of $42 bn. Warren Buffett with a 26.92% stake in OXY, for which he’s paid an average of $51.92 per share, is down 21% on his investment. I wonder what his response would be today if the OXY plane landed in Omaha with a deal in management’s pocket. I have a pretty good idea actually.

I will reiterate-the Industrial logic of upstream M&A is abundantly clear. As an industry matures size and scale matter, and perhaps (likely) this is where value shows up for shareholders who remain long for an extended period. The company can continue to develop oil and gas deposits long after the standalone company would have drilled itself out of existence. But over the short run, it looks like a shell game to me.

By David Messler for Oilprice.com