Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, oversaw a hearing yesterday entitled “Oil, Oligarchs, and Opportunity: Energy from Central Asia to Europe” to examine Russia’s use of its enormous oil and gas reserves, and regional pipeline system, to expand its global political influence and economic leverage. Testimony was received from Zbigniew Brzezinski, Leon Fuerth, Zeyno Baran, and Roman Kupchinsky. Biden commented that “We need diplomacy to forge a common strategy among energy consuming countries in Europe, a shared effort that can confront Russian dominance.” Sen. Richard Lugar, who gave the opening statement, said that “Unfortunately, since Riga, the trend has moved away from European unity on energy supplies. Recently, Russia has concluded energy supply agreements with Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Serbia. The Kremlin has an agreement with Germany to construct the Nord Stream pipeline and with Italy’s ENI to construct the South Stream pipeline. The current go-it-alone approach by many European nations will result in increased European dependence on Gazprom, greater vulnerability to supply disruptions, and less alliance cohesion on critical foreign policy issues. (…) “Gazprom’s monopoly-seeking activities cannot be explained by economic motives alone. It is difficult to distinguish where the Russian Government ends and where Gazprom begins. Clearly Gazprom has sacrificed profits and needed domestic infrastructure investments to achieve Russian foreign policy goals. The Kremlin and Gazprom have shut off energy supplies to six different countries during the last several years.” A video of the hearing can be watched here, and below I have excerpted Roman Kupchinsky’s testimony, which makes mention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.