Word: sovietizing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Soviet Union...
...Soviet Union was a global power...
...Russian-controlled section of the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline to the Black Sea. "We want to put an end to this!" says Khosbakht Yusifzadeh, slamming his fist on his desk. He is the aging first vice president of the State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan and spent decades as a Soviet official. The country's best shot at breaking Russia's grip is BP's parallel gas pipeline, which in December began transporting gas from Azerbaijan's massive Caspian Sea gas field named Shah Deniz. "I see it now," says Yusifzadeh, looking at a wall map of the Caspian...
...billion from BP's pipeline during the next 20 years--has rarely been independent either of Russia's influence or foreign treasure hunters. Baku's élite included the Rothschilds during the 1890s, when Azerbaijan produced half the world's oil supply. Oil production slid steadily as the Soviets let the infrastructure rot. Today hundreds of rusted oil derricks and pump jacks, many predating World War II, cram the seafront outside Baku like a scrap-metal forest, with old Soviet tractors turning several wells. The astonishing sight was memorialized in the 1999 James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough...
Back in the oil terminal outside Baku, Bala Mirza, the engineer at the computer monitor, says he has already reaped benefits from the new oil boom. His life is barely recognizable from those days when he earned $10 a month on that offshore Soviet rig. Since joining the pipeline project in 2003, he has bought a car for himself and for his father, who worked in Soviet oil production for 30 years. But the real test of how Azerbaijan has changed will be the future of Mirza's daughter, who is now 10. "When all our oil is finished...