The Oil Drum

37 comments on Are we worried yet? Or more on Gazprom etc.

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Dave Cohen on April 18, 2006 - 10:51am

That was a joke, Sargon. I know what "neft" means in Russian.

Racism? Give me a break.

Is it racism is if criticize ExxonMobil? Or Gazprom? These are corporations. Since Russia holds 1/4 of the world's natural gas reserves, they are engaged in monopolistic practices and pressuring many countries who need the gas or would like to sell their own gas, as in the FSU.

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Sargon on April 18, 2006 - 11:51am

Is it racism is if criticize ExxonMobil? Or Gazprom? These are corporations.

Exactly. But 'neft' is a word. From a language. Which is spoken by people. And jokes about peoples are best left to the peoples themselves - not to the others.

Anyway, break given :-)

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dima on April 18, 2006 - 12:39pm

Hmm... Just for the sake of the argument, if Gazprom held 100% of the world's gas, would they still be "engaging in monopolistic practices"? I wonder... I mean, they don't have to sell to people who are mean to Russians, do they? It seems a little funny to get all huffy about Gazprom's business practices - given the West's record of dirty dealings with Russia and the developing world. A bit desperate and pathetic as well.

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Dave Cohen on April 18, 2006 - 1:12pm

Re: "It seems a little funny to get all huffy about Gazprom's business practices..."

I am sometimes equally harsh in my views and remarks about IOCs like BP, ExxonMobil, etc. and state-owned NOCs like SaudiAramco. Gazprom is now very powerful and with power comes corruption. As for the West's "record of dirty dealing", I take that as a given.

It is never valid to make the argument that somebody (in this case Gazprom) is OK because others are worse.

On a related note, you might read Reheating the Cold War by M K Bhadrakumar from the Asian Times, one of my favorite sources.

Three assaults on the Kremlin within the month must be extraordinary even by Cold War standards. They prompted Anatol Lieven, a prominent American scholar on Russia, to pose a rhetorical question: "Why are we trying to reheat the Cold War?"
It all began with a 94-page report released by the influential think-tank the Council on Foreign Relations on March 5 titled "Russia's Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should Do". It concluded that Russia's foreign and domestic policies had taken directions that hurt US global interests; that a US-Russian partnership was no longer feasible; and that the US should lead a coordinated Western policy of "selective cooperation" with Russia, a variant of the policy of detente during the Cold War years....
The same day, while on a visit to Australia, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed concern over the "centralization of power in the Kremlin" and spoke about the danger that "by its very existence, a presidency that is strong without countervailing institutions can be subverted, can subvert democracy".
Rice, speaking to a town-hall audience in Sydney, saw "a very difficult and shaky path" right now for Russian democracy, and expressed the hope that the Russian people "will find their voice to demand accountable, transparent institutions and to demand the ability to organize themselves to petition their government and, if necessary, to change their government".
A "regime change" in Russia!....

And there is much more. So, our current beloved administration and their neocon minions have decided to take a hostile position in regard to Russia's policies (and of course, their energy practices). This is exactly the opposite of what US policy should be--which should be cooperation and diplomacy.

But underlying some of these comments in this thread is the idea that I have something against the Russians. Nothing could be further from the truth. Moreover, I actually did a post on Russia in which I tried to do a detailed objective examination of their oil reserves and future capacity.

Finally, I realize that Putin is very popular in Russia and if that is the way they want to run their government, it's fine with me. My only concern with them is that their internal energy policies may be misguided.

best, Dave

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