Cyrill Vatomsky, Where All Politics Are Global

Is this where the golden secure parachute will be found for Vladimir Putin when he is termed out from the presidency of Russia in 2008?

On Saturday Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting of the Russian Security Council at which a new strategy that would give the government control of gas and oil extraction from the Russian shelf was discussed. It is hoped that the shelf will be Russia’s main energy resource base for the 21st century. To achieve this goal, the strategy calls for an end to joint-venture projects and a renewed focus on Russia’s home-grown strengths. To that end, the Russian gas and oil giants Gazprom, Rosneft, and Zarubezhneft may be combined into a single government monopoly that would take over the shelf, which would mean new inspections and headaches for foreign operators already working there

• Decimation of Yukos and transfer of its assets to Roseneft for pennies on the dollar. 
• Appointment of Putin's long time personal secretary and aid Igor Sechin to Chairmanship of the Board of Directors of Rosneft.
• Float the Rosneft IPO at FTSE. The IPO was coordinated with the Kremlin.
• Alexei Miller, another Putin's confidant from when Putin was deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg is the CEO of Gazprom.
• Valery Golubyev yet another ex-KGB, ex-St. Peterburg government confidant was appointed to run Gazprom's oil arm.
• German Gref, Russian Economic Development minister made a mistake suggesting to split Gazprom. Mr. Putin had a talk with him and the issue is no longer on the agenda.
• Earlier this year Gazprom was given the natural gas export monopoly.
• Gazprom now has former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on its payroll

Putin considers it a personal achievement that Gazprom is now worth about $260 billion and ranks as the third-largest corporation worldwide in terms of market capitalization, after ExxonMobil and General Electric. The position Gazprom now holds in the international energy trade is "the result of concerted state activity," Putin said in his state of the nation address in May.

• Use Gazprom's subsidiary Gazprom Media to take control of the major private - as it was at the time - TV Channel NTV.
• Use Gazprom to exert (or is it extort) influence over neighbouring states by either closing or threatening to close the natural gas or oil spigots.
• Use Gazprom to literally incite rebellions in disputed or breakaway areas of independent states formerly parts of the USSR.

Gazprom's leadership went as far as receiving South Ossetian "President" Eduard Kokoity for negotiations last October. The subject of the negotiations was an ambitious pipeline construction project. The pipeline would lead across the Caucasian Crest and into South Ossetia's capital city of Tskhinvali. Both the smirking rebel leader and the Gazprom managers knew only too well that the project, developed by the Kremlin, wasn't motivated by expectation of financial gain, but by the desire for political power.

• Use Schröder and the proposed pipeline across the Baltic Sea to drive a wedge between Western Europe and ungrateful former USSR sattelites and colonies like Poland, Ukraine, Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania, by threatening to isolate them from energy resources.
• Actively use foreign policy of Russia to destabilize the Caucuses region via Chechnya, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and prevent more capital investment in creating pipelines that would bypass Russia, threatening its monopoly and leverage power, and connect Central Asian energy resources with access to Black and to Mediterranean seas. 
• Begin harassment of foreign investors (Sakhalin) with the aim of either forcing new conditions or altogether forcing them away.
• Start moving towards creating a global natural gas cartel.