Energy Blast – May 23, 2011

Transneft intends to fight a court mandate (won by Alexei Navalny) that would force it to release its board meeting minutes. Navalny says that the minutes could reveal Transneft as guilty of embezzlement; Transneft’s chief executive countered with the creative accusation that Navalny ‘is being licked by Madeleine Albright’s National Democratic Institute‘.  Cash-strapped Belarus is apparently planning to sell its stake in its own gas pipeline network to Russia for $2.5 billion, giving the country complete control.  TNK-BP’s dividend payout for 2010 is to constitute almost all of its profits from that year.  The U.S. has approved the first exports of natural gas through the Gulf of Mexico, in a move that could raise energy costs at home.