China’s Long-Term Strategy vs The West’s Civil War and Short-Termism While the effectively bankrupt West is tearing itself apart and undermining its society, economy and science, China is not just getting on with it, but forging ahead. A good starting point in understanding what is happening now, with all the…
Read MoreOn June 18, 2013, President Putin warned that government revenues would be less than previously expected and that the budget policy for 2014-2016 had to be planned accordingly. He also said that while revenues from natural resources were decreasing, financing from other industries was so far limited. In its annual review of the Russian economy, the International Monetary Fund has just…
Read MoreMost observers agree that after making generous promises during the presidential election campaign, Vladimir Putin has finally realized that Gazprom is no longer the state’s cash cow. In October, he warned that the development of shale gas “could seriously restructure the global market for hydrocarbons,” although experts argued it was a…
Read MoreAs more and more countries explore the possibility of shale gas, Russia’s reliance on energy exports for future economic growth looks more and more fragile. As rising political risk spooks investors in Russia following the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections, recent developments in other countries and continents show that the country’s…
Read MoreThe inauguration of the long-anticipated Nord Stream pipeline gave both Russia and EU representatives the opportunity to say nice things about the other – but the actions behind the words are what counts. On Nov. 7, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was in Germany to take part in the official inauguration…
Read MoreAbout a year ago, the international media buzzed with talk about the idea of countries such as Russia, Algeria and Iran forming a cartel for natural gas along the lines of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). To people in the West with long memories, this threat of a…
Read MoreMOSCOW. (Ian Pryde for RIA-Novosti) – Last Thursday, Russia’s President Putin arrived in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, for the start of a week-long visit to Central Asia, which will focus on energy. But the visit is not just about oil and gas. Electricity generation and transmission and atomic energy…
Read MoreAlthough the December-January pricing spat between Russia and Ukraine focused attention on Europe’s dependence on outside sources of gas, the political/energy security nexus in East Asia has been acute for decades. In the mid-1990s, Kent E. Calder published the book “Asia’s Deadly Triangle: How Arms, Energy and Growth Threaten to…
Read MoreFollowing the disputes over energy with Ukraine in 2005-6 and the interruption to supplies to Georgia after bombs took down two electricity pylons on Jan. 21, 2006 and the gas pipeline the next day, the “oil and gas” wars with Belarus in 2006-7 have once again led to all around…
Read MoreThe steadily improving relations between Russia and China reached a new high earlier this year when the two countries signed 29 bilateral agreements on energy, telecommunications, information technology, banking and money laundering during President Vladimir Putin’s March visit to Beijing. In some quarters, these new agreements cemented their fears of…
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