Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Ivan Krylov published The Mouse and the Rat in 1816. My rough translation follows, without the last quatrain, or the “moral” of the fable. “Dear neighbor, have your heard the good rumors?” Said Mouse to Rat, running in. “They say the cat has…
Ronald Smith, also known as Ron Smith, Citigroup’s oil and gas analyst covering Russia and the CIS, argues in the Financial Times (if you cannot access it, try googling the title and reading Google’s cache) that Russia is likely to…
In March 2014 – right after Moscow’s Crimea operation – Christopher Helman, who covers the energy business for Forbes, wrote: So why has Exxon excelled there [in Russia]? I think it’s because Exxon has proven itself to be as hard-nosed as Putin…
About a month ago I noticed that the opening two lines of T. S. Eliot’s Grishkin poem from Whispers of Immortality (1920) mimic the respective lines of Théophile Gautier’s Carmen (1852). Compare Eliot’s half-stanza Grishkin is nice: her Russian eyeIs…
If I were to respond to this piece, I’d probably make these points: Exxon has always negotiated with Moscow from a position of strength. Can you say this of the other majors with tangible Russian exposure – BP, Shell and…
In dealing with Russian authorities, Exxon has always stood out among its peers for toughness. The company has steadfastly rejected opportunities that would not put it in control of a project: it would rather stay away altogether. As a result,…
Almost two months ago, in October 2016, I wrote that Russian oil companies could reduce their daily oil output by slowing down production growth at newly launched fields and by reinvesting less in mature fields, increasing their decline rate to…
TASS reports on Putin’s annual address to the Russian parliament (the Duma and the Federation Council): The policy of developing the political system and institutions of direct democracy, as well as enhancing the elections’ competitiveness will be continued, the president…
They should have done it in 2014: Lawmakers [MEPs] voted on November 23 in favor of a motion condemning Russian state media outlets like the television channel RT and the news agency Sputnik for disseminating “absolutely fake” news. They said…
I have just learned of yet another Russian cable TV channel, courtesy of John Schindler: Then there’s Tsargrad TV, which is Russia’s version of Fox News, if Fox News were run by hardline Russian Orthodox believers. If “Fox News” stands…
Apologies for quoting from the Daily Mail. Occasionally it does render a valuable public service: The national editor of Politico’s weekly news magazine resigned his position on Tuesday after he came under fire for advocating baseball-bat attacks on a white…
There is no arguing with Gary Shteyngart that much Old-World nastiness, including anti-Semitism, has lately spread from the fringes of online alt-rightism. We would likely disagree on the dimension and perniciousness of those fringes. In the eyes of the novelist,…