Question: The Soleimani incident is not a small matter for the United States as it might lose control in the Middle East. What will happen next? What impact will it have on the world?

Chan Kung: Looking at the situation in the Middle East, there are several forces. First, the United States; second, Russia; third, Iran; fourth, Turkey; fifth, Saudi Arabia; and finally, the warlord separatist forces. I think these six forces determine the future of the Middle East, but what kind of scenarios will take place, and how do we define them? How will all these affect the world? These are the points that we need to evaluate.

At least for now, the arguments that the United States disrupted the Middle East for the sake of grabbing third-party benefits, or even color revolutions are untenable.

This needs to be clarified from the perspective of geopolitics. The real big problem now is that the United States has lost control of the Middle East, and the existence of the six major forces is proof of this. The United States' loss of control over the Middle East has a great impact. From the perspective of global oil and gas resources, the changes brought about by the shale gas revolution in the United States could just be limited to maintaining the stability of the United States' own energy supply, and have limited impact on global energy prices. The geospatial problem, that is, the gradual decoupling of the United States from the Middle East, is limited to its links with forces in Saudi Arabia, i.e. the Gulf countries, and it also causes the Middle East oil price to lose control. In general, I believe that by comprehensively judging global energy prices, the price level in 2019 will be roughly maintained in the year 2020, and oil prices show extremely high geospatial price characteristics. It will be difficult for the Middle East to be dominated by a single fraction in the future, and Russia will not be able to obtain all the power. This is too costly for Russia, so Russia is a persistent issue in the Middle East. The Middle East as a whole is a stalemate in the future, and there is a long way for it from being geopolitically integrated. Under such condition, I personally estimate that the oil price in 2020 will be around from US$ 65 to US$ 75.