Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Who will Gazprom assasinate next?

After this cheeky bit of news:

“The head of a Russian fund that says it promotes the development of small oil
and gas producers was shot dead on Tuesday in southwest Moscow, the Reuters news agency reports. Zelimkhan Magomedov, 50, general director of the National Oil Institute Fund, was shot twice in the head.”
One simply has to wonder - who will be next? Will it be…

Arkady Ostorvsky for making the below comment in his article in the WSJ:
"Gazprom, the dominant gas supplier that frequently doubles as a Kremlin foreign policy arm, is not producing enough for an economy growing at more than 6 per cent a year. "

Vladimir Milov, head of the Institute for Energy Policy, for making the following comment to the media:
"Gazprom was given enormous privileges in exchange for providing the country with gas at regulated prices. If it wants to behave as a commercial company, it should not be a monopoly."

German Gref, minister for economic development and trade for implying Gazprom should be “independently regulated.”

Analysts at UBS Russia for questioning Gazprom’s strategy.

“Analysts say the problem is not the lack of gas - Russia has 16 per cent of the world's total reserves - but rather Gazprom's investment strategy. Over the past few years the company has spent vigorously on anything but developing its reserves. It has built a pipeline to Turkey, taken over an oil company, invested in UES and tried to gain a foothold in European distribution markets. All this was in the name of creating a national energy champion. But investment in Gazprom's core activity was inadequate.”
Why has Gazprom not been investing in developing fields? Because it’s going to take Sakhalin away from Shell (who has already done all the work).

The citizens of St. Petersburg as they re-experience the horrors of WWII when their city loses heat in the middle of winter.

The country of Turkmenistan for not supplying enough gas and quibbling with the Allmighty.

Chechnyan Warlords (or random Georgians who will be dressed up to look like Chechnyan warlords) who will then be blamed for the gas shortage as well as every other problem plaguing Russia at the moment.

Always seeking to profit from energy arbitrage, I am relocating some of my freelance monkey snipers (alluded to in the previous post) to Russia.

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