Here's a scorcher from Kostis Geropoulos at New Europe:
Against the backdrop of the EU-Russia summit held symbolically in the remote Russian far-eastern city of Khabarovsk on May 21- 22, European officials have accused Russian gas giant Gazprom of spending far too much time playing politics over gas and not enough time developing new resources. Russia, Gazprom, Vladimir Putin -- I suppose it's the same thing - have spent far too much time playing pipeline politics and have not put enough effort into starting some of the investment programmes that would be required to both substitute for the expected decline in existing production and add the production that would be required to fill new planned pipelines such as Nord Stream and South Stream, Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Ural- Sib bank, told New Europe, telephonically from Moscow. (...)
"In terms of a ticking clock, Russia is under pressure to start making progress in terms of investment in some of the newer fields, all of which have plenty of gas in them,"Weafer said. "That's the central issue between the European Union and Russia. It's not so much about the pipelines, it's much more about the pace of the investment to generate new production to compensate for the decline plus provide the new gas Europe will need," he said.
Lemme get this straight. People whose gas demand is declining, and who decry excessive Russian dominace of their energy market out of one side of their mouths, bleat about insufficient Russian investment in gas fields out of the other, while the price of gas drops.
It's official. The Euros have gone insane. There is no other explanation for this self-contradictory, and entirely self-serving, set of positions.
Thinking that " Big Oil " or " Big Gaz " is disconnected with politics or geopolitics is the greatest hypocrisy i have ever seen .
Trade , banking were always used as diplomatical tools or had to " make politics " as is " Big Oil " since the begenning of the XXth century .
" playing pipeline politics " : Oil and gaz are lying unearthed and they will not vanish as were spices and silk in the Orient .
As in the middle-ages and the modern times post 1492 , the problem was to find routes to transport them succesfully to Europe , even by waging wars .
The problem was not to develop new harversting aereas or new silk worm nurseries but to built fleets of merchant wessels, outposts , wharfs ,wharehouses , military strongpoints and harbors , navies .............
The great capitalistic structures as the East India compagny always tried to monopolize the production and the transport .
They always acted as a " governement bis " , had their own diplomacies , developping their own armies .
So what is GAZPROM ?
GAZPROM is the first successfull Russo-Soviet " East India like " monopolistic structure which is developing production , transportation and wants to enter final distribution .
Like the EI Co , it has even its own militia .
So what's the matter ?
If GAZPROM was Dutch , Us or British , this blog would have not existed .