Energy Blast – Nov 10, 2010

President Medvedev has said that North Korea’s nuclear program is making Russia feel ‘uneasy’.  A meeting between the Russian President and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak in Seoul saw Gazprom agree on a deal for the potential exporting of 10 billion cubic metres of gas to South Korea, per year, from 2017.  Iran has apparently agreed to hold talks on its nuclear program with the five permanent United Nations Security Council members, but with a major caveat, that it will not consider a nuclear fuel exchange.  John R. Bolton and John Yoo in the New York Times urge Republicans to seek amendments to the START treaty: ‘New Start’s faults are legion‘.  ‘Failure to win passage could trip up one of the administration’s top foreign policy goals: improving relations with Russia.’  Is US liquefied natural gas going to change European dependence on Russia?  European Union Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger has told reporters that closer ties with Russia will reduce the risk of any winter gas supply crises.  The US is hoping that participants in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium will invest $5 billion to expand the network, thus, they claim, improving energy security.  The International Energy Agency has predicted that Caspian gas exports from energy hotbeds like Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan may increase three-fold over the next ten years.  Novatek shares reached a record high yesterday as its board of directors agreed to the purchase of two West Siberian gas projects.