Posts tagged as:

Energy

Putin nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

November 23, 2007

This Russia Today report is a joke, right?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The International Center for Research on Biofuels and Patents in Zurich has chosen Putin for his alternative fuel initiatives in Russia.
The Swiss organisation says its main goal is to prevent future wars over oil.
The centre proposed [...]

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UK fear of winter energy crisis is bad news for Russia

November 1, 2007

Front page of the Guardian newspaper yesterday was a story about rising fears of an energy crisis this winter in the UK.
Britain faces the prospect of power shortages and soaring prices this winter after the National Grid warned of a shortfall in electricity-generating capacity yesterday. The alert coincides with a surge in gas prices, [...]

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Russia, the EU, pipelines and Central Asia

October 30, 2007

Two blogs about Central Asia, writing about Russia’s energy relations with the European Union. Yes, there is a reason behind their madness.
First up is Josh over at Registan, quickly followed by Ben at NewEurasia.

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Picture – Russian Flag on North Pole seabed

August 4, 2007

Russia has planted its flag on the North Pole seabed, under the Artic ice.  Here’s a picture, courtesy of NTV:

Cute, huh? 
I was going to write about this story in far more detail, but others have explained far better than I could the reasons why Russia is so keen on claiming the North Pole as its [...]

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Russia to cut off gas to Belarus – again

August 2, 2007

Russia’s Gazprom are to cut off gas to Belarus, in a row over unpaid bills.  According to Gazprom, Belarus are more than $450 million behind in payments, and so they are left with no choice but to cut supplies by 45% from Friday (August 3rd).
As this cutoff seems to be related to Belarus’ reluctance, or [...]

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Gazprom’s private army

July 4, 2007

The Russian Duma has today voted in favour of allowing Gazprom to form its own private army. Reuters reports:
A law backed by 341 lawmakers in the 450-seat State Duma lower house of parliament gave Gazprom, and oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, special exemption from strict limits on private businesses wielding arms.
The two state-controlled companies will [...]

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Gazprom has to stop playing silly games

June 19, 2007

The Financial Times is distinctly unimpressed by Gazprom’s posturing in the British energy market:
For all its macho posturing, all Gazprom has managed to acquire so far in the UK is Pennine Natural Gas, in Wilmslow, Cheshire, which has about 600 customers. Pennine employs just 12 people in the UK – hardly the path to world [...]

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Gazprom target mystery UK company for takeover

June 12, 2007

In a rather mysterious statement, Gazprom announced earlier this week that it planned to increase its presence in Britain. 
A Gazprom spokesman confirmed:
“In the near future there will be a deal to further increase the customer base on the British market. Anyone who will be in London for the Wimbledon tennis tournament will know about it.”
Speculation [...]

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Australia to export Uranium to Russia

June 6, 2007

Australia and Russia have signed a deal allowing Australia to supply uranium to Russian nuclear reactors.
Initially this struck me as rather odd – I’d always assumed that Russia was pretty much self-sufficient when it comes to uranium.
But, interestingly, Russia doesn’t mine anywhere near enough uranium to fuel all its nuclear reactors (military or civilian) or to [...]

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Russia, the EU, and Energy politics

April 4, 2007

An excellent post about EU-Russia relations and energy over at Moscow Rules, including one of the most astute observations on Russia’s approach to international law that I’ve read in quite a while:
Signing a Charter is politics and can be fudged: ratification is Law and Russia, the land of signing-and-stamping stuff, appreciates the difference.
The Charter in [...]

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BBC publishes advertisment for Gazprom

March 26, 2007

Seriously – could this BBC article be any more uncritical of Gazprom?

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Rosneft to go on spending spree?

March 21, 2007

Rosneft have taken out a loan of $13 billion.   Mosnews reports that the loan is to:
to finance large acquisitions in Russia and abroad.
I wonder what they plan to spend it on.  Anyone got any ideas?

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Production Sharing Agreements

March 8, 2007

Tim Newman has an article up at TCS daily correcting some misinformation about oil and gas Production Sharing Agreements, using both Russia and Iraq as case studies. 

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Russia – the world’s 10th largest economy

January 31, 2007

Russia’s economy may have its problems, but the country’s size, plus the enormous boom its energy industry has enjoyed have combined to make Russia the 10th largest economy in the world, by overall size.  The Economist Intelligence Unit (they of The Economist magazine fame) estimate that Russia’s economy in 2006 was worth $986.6 billion, a startling $223.3 billion [...]

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Joseph Nye – what Russia is doing wrong

January 30, 2007

Joseph Nye (the soft power guy) offers up four reasons why Russia will not be a major power in 2020:

They are failing to diversify away from energy and develop a broad based economy rapidly enough. 
They need a rule of law that protects entrepreneurs and helps foster a middle class that will support a democratic market [...]

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