Energy Blast – Dec 13, 2010

This weekend saw Turkmenistan play host to the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan in an attempt to make progress on the Iran-avoiding TAPI pipeline, which would see the energy-rich central Asian nation export 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year to the two nations.    Rosneft will apparently welcome summer spy swap participant Andrei Bezrukov to the fold as an international projects adviser.  Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has criticized the continuation of IMF loans to Ukraine’s supplier of natural gas, RosUkrEnergo, (part owned by Gazprom) which she calls the perpetrator of the ‘largest-scale financial crime in Ukraine’s history’.  India’s state-run explorer, Oil India Ltd., has apparently invited Gazprom to develop two gas fields on the sub-continent.  START may be unsteady, but both the US and Russia have reportedly agreed upon a new civilian nuclear energy pact.