Posts on ‘December 26th, 2006’

Blaming Gazprom is only half of the story By Derek Brower, Journalist AND so another squabble ends with Gazprom the victor. Shell, once the kind of company that dictated terms to others, got a taste of the new medicine. The Kremlin is the alchemist, and its gas monopoly the distributor. The deal signed in Moscow [...]

EXTRACT: A year which began with Russia cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine and ended with it strong-arming Shell to cede control over the country’s biggest oil and gas project reminds us that markets should price not just reward but risk as well. THE ARTICLE Business comment By Tom Stevenson Last Updated: 12:32am GMT 27/12/2006 [...]

Africa Features By Tia Goldenberg Dec 26, 2006, 18:48 GMT Nairobi/Abuja – Hundreds of people attempting to steal fuel from a pipeline in Nigeria were burnt to death on Tuesday, proving that as the West African nation becomes wealthier from its oil riches, the country’s poor suffer. Tuesday’s blast came after oil thieves vandalized the [...]

Associated Press By KATHARINE HOURELD 12.26.06, 2:43 PM ET   A gasoline pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into a blazing inferno Tuesday as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighborhood, killing at least 260 people in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa’s biggest petroleum producer. Braving a towering pillar of fire and a [...]

20:16 | 26/ 12/ 2006  MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Alexander Yurov) – The urgent visit to Moscow of top executives from companies that are participating in the Sakhalin II project and their meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin ended with mutual satisfaction. Royal Dutch/Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi agreed to let the Russian gas giant [...]

Passage into state hands has been seen as another successful Kremlin effort to reestablish control over Russia’s energy production      Tuesday, December 26, 2006 by RFE/RL    Anglo-Dutch giant Shell and two Japanese companies have announced they will cede their majority stake in the Sakhalin-2 energy project to Russia’s state-controlled natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, for $7.45 [...]

Richard Weitz | 26 Dec 2006 World Politics Watch Exclusive On Dec. 22, the Russian government succeeded in its long-standing campaign to wrest control of the country’s largest single foreign investment project — the $22 billion natural gas development on the Russian Pacific island of Sakhalin. The project includes the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) [...]

Chevron and other oil companies have to postpone projects because of the lack of such vessels. Joe Carroll | Bloomberg News Posted December 26, 2006  Bill Thornburg, a senior drill-site manager for Chevron Corp., opens a steel door on a floating oil rig off the Louisiana coast and stops dead in his tracks. Red plastic [...]

Reuters MOSCOW — TNK-BP must accommodate Gazprom into its giant Kovykta gas project or face new sanctions for licensing noncompliance, an official said Thursday. TNK-BP is the main shareholder in Rusia Petroleum, which has the license to operate Kovykta. Under the licensing agreement, the firm should produce 9 billion cubic meters of gas next year. [...]

11:50 | 26/ 12/ 2006  MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Nina Kulikova) – This year has been the most eventful for Russia’s energy policies since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Moscow has convinced everyone that the many years of subsidized gas prices for neighboring economies are becoming a thing of the past and that [...]

By ROBERT AMSTERDAM December 26, 2006   In the latest news coming out of Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been transferred within Siberia from a gulag to a pre-trial detention center in Chita for what may be the application of further bogus charges against him. And on Friday, police officials took his father, recently released from [...]

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 26/12/2006 Nearly seven years ago, on the eve of his becoming interim president of Russia, Vladimir Putin published his Millennium Manifesto. Following the collapse of communism and the chaos of the Yeltsin years, this was a blueprint for restoring Russian greatness which traced a “third way” between discredited Bolshevism and Western [...]

Issue #1233(99), Tuesday, December 26, 2006 By Sebastian Smith AGENCE FRANCE PRESS/Bloomberg MOSCOW — Moscow has savoured victory after state giant Gazprom ousted Royal Dutch Shell from control of the Sakhalin-2 energy project, ending a struggle highlighting changing rules in Russia’s bare-knuckle business environment. The announcement late on Thursday that Gazprom would take the controlling [...]