Energy Blast – August 31, 2009

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency has filed a report suggesting that North Korea has failed to put a stop to its uranium enriching program and that Russia and China need to wholeheartedly back further sanctions.  According to Bloomberg, Japan apparently proposed to offer Gazprom $2 billion to help finance the building of a pipeline in exchange for 1 million tons of steel pipe.  PrimeGen Energy has announced it has signed a letter of intent to sell 75% of its working interest in its Timan-Pechora assets in Russia.  Lukoil anticipates that domestic oil production will get slower and perhaps even begin to decline, though Caspian and other foreign projects will see the company through the period of stagnation.  The company’s vice president Leonid Fedun has defended competitors TNK-NP and Gazprom against the fines the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has levied upon them.  Poland’s gas monopoly PGNiG has posted an unexpected second-quarter net loss of $33 million.   RFE/RL reports on the 60th anniversary of the Russia’s first nuclear test, which took place in northern Kazakhstan, and the legacy of toxicity that afflicted the lives of residents in the supposedly uninhabited region.