Tag Gazprom

Denial works. In a way.

During a televised Q&A session in April 2013, Vladimir Putin responded to a journalist’s claim that Gazprom had mistakenly written off the shale gas revolution as a short-term fluke: So it’s hard to say whether Gazprom missed the ‘shale-gas revolution’…

An object of interest

Bob Seely, the conservative MP for the Isle of White, made these claims during a hearing on May 1: …Christopher Chandler is a public figure, owing to the Legatum Institute… According to the French security services… Mr Chandler is described…

LNG glut vs. Gazprom’s unused capacity

The previous two posts may seem an exercise in pedantry: so what if Britain is less dependent on Gazprom than Germany or Poland now? Shouldn’t we look beyond 2016 – beyond 2020, even – to a time when Gazprom becomes the…

Not in thrall to Gazprom (yet)

A follow-up to Thursday’s post on Gazprom and the UK. Reuters sounded alarmist when it reported in 2015: Russia provides around 30 percent of the EU’s gas and a single supply deal signed last year by Britain’s biggest energy supplier Centrica meant…

Flirting with the corporate state

My grandfather had several English-Russian dictionaries. The preface to one of them, a sold, detailed wordbook, began more or less like this: “The teaching of I.V. Stalin on language has opened the way to a truly scientific, Marxist study of…

28 of 29 of 30

As of this afternoon, I believe 29 of the 30 Greenpeace activists from the Arctic Sunrise had been granted bail and 28 had been freed. One Briton was still in jail on a technicality. They can even leave Russia pending…

When in doubt, call them hooligans

Russia has announced that it will be replacing the original piracy charges against the Greenpeace 30 with hooliganism and, for some, resistance to lawful authorities. Hooliganism is becoming a one size fits all charge – unexpectedly linking Pussy Riot and…

The irony of it all

Greenpeace’s Russian lawyers unearthed a curious court ruling dating back to 2009. The Gazprom unit which owns the Prirazlomnaya platform was involved in a dispute with the tax authorities over value added tax (VAT) reimbursement. To get the VAT back,…

Gazprom’s $3-bln platform

Offshore oil production is less than 3% of Russia’s total but Russia has grandiose plans for oil and gas production in the Arctic ocean as well as the Black Sea and the Far Eastern seas. ExxonMobil’s and Shell/s experience operating…