Month: August 2009

August 7, 2009

Window Dressing on State Corporate Reform

From the Financial Times article on Dmitry Medvedev’s ordering of a probe into state-owned corporations. The president has positioned himself as more liberal than his predecessor, often vowing to cut red tape and limit Russia’s vast bu...
August 7, 2009

Turkey’s Geostrategic Energy Role

Given all the news this week of Russia and Italy’s South Stream deal with Turkey in exchange for a nuclear power plant, I thought I would repost an article written by Robert Amsterdam last fall in Energy Risk on Turkey’s political pipe...
August 7, 2009

The Gazprom MO on Sakhalin

Streetwise Professor picks apart two dovetailing pieces of news – the first that Russia is making unprecedented pressures on ExxonMobil’s Sakhalin-1 project to export more of its production for domestic consumption inside Russia, follo...
August 7, 2009

The Pikalyovo Virus Spreads to Tolyatti

When wide scale protests over wage arrears broke out in the town of Pikalyovo, near St. Petersburg, this past June, Vladimir Putin leaped into action to put out the fire.  He toured the factories, met with protest leaders, called the Kremlin-...
August 7, 2009

Energy Blast – August 7, 2009

Vladimir Putin has rejected the 15-year old international Energy Charter Treaty.  According to the Prime Minister, Turkey and Russia ‘agreed on everything’ regarding South Stream at their energy deal meeting and added, ‘it i...
August 7, 2009

Today in Russian Business – August 7, 2009

In the latest crackdown on the allegedly illegal activities of Telman Ismailov, his Praga restaurant in Moscow has been searched.  Despite ongoing talks, apparently ‘little progress‘ was made between GM and Magna on its bid for Op...
August 7, 2009

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – August 7, 2009

TODAY: Georgia and Russia, one year on, guns quiet but war of words blazing: who started it?  Opposition says democracy far off; humanitarian issues remain; strike on Twitter linked to conflict.  Chavez military deal; Russia to calm Uzbe...
August 6, 2009

Turkish (Pipeline) Delight

As Ed Crooks points out in the FT on the new Russia-Turkey deal on the South Stream pipeline, in the geopolitics of energy, there are no friends, only partners.  Here’s what the Russians paid the Turks to sign on to a pipeline that cuts...
August 6, 2009

Protest Photos of Putin’s Visit to Turkey

Vladimir Putin’s visit to Turkey, where he’s already signed on their support for the South Stream pipeline through Black Sea waters, was also greeted with a couple protests – one from the Chechens, and the other from Greenpeace. ...