Word: gazprom
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...kick off promisingly when Gazprom, Russia’s Kremlin-owned energy monopoly, interrupted Ukraine’s natural gas flow through the ironically named “Brotherhood” pipeline. Ever since the downfall of the USSR, former satellite Soviet republics have benefited from heavily subsidized gas prices. Wanting to update Ukraine’s access to “international standards,” Gazprom raised the price of gas from $50 per thousand cubic meters to $230. The more than 400-percent increase was cleverly couched in the Western language of free trade and open international...
Moscow often courts thirsty foreign hedge funds with the possibility of making Gazprom public, but the fact remains that it is far from an independent company. In fact, Dmitry Medvedev, a close friend of President Putin and the first deputy prime minister of Russia, chairs the “corporation.” In the last months, this behemoth bought, in a throwback to good ol’ Soviet times, curious assets to “complete its portfolio”: Izvestia, a money-losing newspaper, and NTV, a leading TV network formerly owned by one of Putin?...
...which was built on the premise to take the country away from the Kremlin’s spheres of influence. Former Soviet republic Belarus, on the other hand, has an authoritarian government keen on close relationships with Moscow and still enjoys cheap energy. Thus, gas from murky companies like Gazprom flows with political scents—and according to Putin’s desires...
...Illarionov: The strengthening of the corporativist state model and setting up favorable conditions for quasi-state monopolies by the state itself hurt the economy. Like Gazprom purchasing Sibneft, and another state monopoly purchasing other private company. The state generated some $30 billion in debt to do just that. Or take the case of RAO UES (the electricity monopoly) buying a sizable part of the Power Machines Plant. When the state unraveled Yukos, officials insisted it was a single such case rather than a trend. But it soon became obvious that Yukos was not a single case, that this concerns...
...Another thing, Russia has made it plain it wants Ukraine's gas transporting system. Then, Gazprom says, the prices will go down. This is the same usage of an energy weapon, as OPEC did in November 1973, when they placed the U.S. and Holland under oil embargo for siding with Israel. Prices skyrocketed; Saudi Arabia enjoyed a couple of years of fat profits. Then, the U.S. and other Western countries improved their economies, and adjusted to new prices, while per capita income in Saudi Arabia has sharply dropped since. A country that is prepared to wield energy weapons must know...