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To: maceng2 who wrote (610)	4/17/2004 6:33:41 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1417

Russia's New Great Game theprosedge.com Guest Author: Joseph Katzman [info\|posts] Catherine Belton of the Moscow Times has an interesting article today about Russia's growing place in the global energy industry... and how it intends to leverage that position: "In this chess game, like those of the past, energy is king. But this time Russia is exploiting its prowess like never before. On the eastern front, it has Japan and China locked in a bidding war for Siberian oil, while in the west it has Europe struggling to deal with its dependency on Gazprom's gas, and in the south it is slowly extending its electric tentacles through state power monopoly Unified Energy Systems. But what is emerging as a sort of "Putin Doctrine" doesn't stop there. It seems to envision Russia as the pivot around which the global oil market revolves, the power broker that can tip the balance between OPEC and the United States. And it seems to call for the rapid international expansion of patriotic companies -- both state-owned and private, energy and nonenergy." It's a game that has Russia playing both sides of the OPEC-U.S. street, making an aggressive attempt to grow other sectors of the economy and helping its captains of industry gain strategic positions on global markets. The cost of capital continues to hinder Russia companies, but the former Soviet republics are a different setting; opportunities and power plays abound there. As one analyst noted: "In the old days of the former Soviet Union, Russia's political clout was measured by the 14,000 nuclear missiles it had pointing west. Now it's measured by the pipelines it has pointing west."