The Fuel Fixers
The last issue of the New York Times Magazine has a compelling article from Peter Maass about an alleged CIA officer who bribed the president of Kazakhstan more than $78 million to guide oil and gas toward Europe and the United States instead of toward Russia and China. In the era of scarce oil, some governments are looking to drop bribery and corruption investigations lest they scare off important supply deals – an extremely negative development, to say the least.