talkin bout gazprom

a few years ago i remember talking with a couple friends about Putin's clever maneouvres with Gazprom as genius tactics for the long term. with yukos oil co.'s mikhail khodorkovsky incapacitated in prison Gazprom was able to takeover roman abramovich's Sibneft. fast forward to 2006:

"At $265 billion, Gazprom is the world's fourth-biggest publicly traded company, after Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp." (bloomberg.com)

now the cold war's victors are running a little scared with a potential russian monopoly on gas supply to europe; condoleeza rice be all up in athens talkin bout energy diversification and shit. and as economic centers of gravity shift to china and india, russian leverage will increase with her market options. all i gotta say is "well done sir, mr Putin." see them western folks scramblin on tv, talkin bout all kindsa wheat grass fuel and other comical alternatives. it will be interesting to see how you engage the arab oil suppliers in the face of US desperation to secure energy reserves.


[today i have a soft spot for russia. she was always branded the enemy in the western spy novels i loved as a kid but she basically won world war ii for us, paying the heaviest price in the process- 27 million military, 19 million civilian deaths. (nobody laments her loss, cuz westerners are hatin' muthafuckas.) of course what's more, russia also produced some of the world's greatest theoretical physicists, and you know i'm bout that.]