WHY USA SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA
FAILED?
Sanctions are NOT working
all that well. Despite moves by the West to isolate Russia, ExxonMobil, BP,
Total, and other oil majors are doubling down in Russia; they just signed mega-contracts
with state-owned Russian oil companies – sanctions be damned. Read.... Exxon,
BP Defy Obama; Extend Partnership with Russia
1-
Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at 3:51PM
By Nick Cunningham, Oilprice.com:
Several of the largest oil companies
in the world are doubling down in Russia despite moves by the West to isolate
Russia and its economy. ExxonMobil and BP separately signed agreements with
Rosneft – Russia’s state-owned oil company – to extend and deepen their relationships
for energy exploration. The U.S. slapped sanctions on Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin
in late April, freezing his assets and preventing him from obtaining visas.
However, the sanctions do not extend
to Rosneft itself, allowing Western companies to continue to do business with
the Russian oil giant. ExxonMobil signed an agreement with Rosneft, extending
its partnership to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on Russia’s
pacific coast. Known as the Far East LNG project, the export terminal will receive
natural gas from Russia’s eastern fields as well as from Sakhalin-1, an island
off Russia’s east coast. Rosneft announced the deal in a press release on its website on May 23.
The following day, Rosneft and BP
signed an agreement to jointly explore oil in the Volga-Urals region. It will
consist of a pilot project in the Domanik formations, and if successful could
lead to the development of shale oil in Russia. Rosneft will maintain a 51
percent ownership of the joint venture and BP will own 49 percent.
The signing of the agreement
occurred during a ceremony at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The
oil majors attended despite pressure from the White House to boycott the event.
Many big name companies chose not to attend even though they have large
economic interests in Russia, including PepsiCo, German companies E.ON and
Siemens, and some of the biggest banks in the U.S.
By defying the White House, the oil
majors salvaged what would have otherwise been an embarrassing event for the
Kremlin. The absence of the world’s largest companies would have demonstrated
Russia’s increasing isolation. Instead, Russia used the event to detail plans
to expand its massive energy sector. “(They're) eager to continue work on
projects in Russia,” Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said of ExxonMobil and Royal
Dutch Shell.
BP CEO Bob Dudley emphasized his
company’s determination to stick with Russia. “We are very pleased to be a part
of Russian energy complex,” he said at the forum. “President (Putin) has
urged us today to invest into shale oil... There's so many natural resources in
Russia, the openness and partnerships Russia has with companies from all over
the world is a good thing for energy,” Dudley added.
----------------
2- June 8-2014
RELATED ARTICLE: US trying to alienate Russia over Ukraine
US trying to alienate Russia over Ukraine
“I’ve been a critic of
the Obama policy toward Ukraine because I think that it has only deepened the
conflict mainly by its efforts over many years now to alienate Russia… instead
of trying to have a peaceful relationship with Russia,”
Sheldon Richman, vice president of The Future of
Freedom Foundation, told Press TV on Sunday.
“I think the United
States has stayed on the Cold War footing in many ways, the main way is the
expansion of the NATO over way up to the Russian border which was contrary to a
promise that was made to Gorbachev under the first Bush administration, the
George H. W. Bush administration,” he added.
“The US made a big mistake in helping to promote a
regime change, a coup really in Ukraine,” Richman said. “Everybody who
understands Russian history should understand this was going to make Russia
very nervous and Putin very nervous.”
The analyst concluded that the United States should stop increasing tensions with Russia over Ukraine as the two countries are nuclear powers.
“The United States and Russia are both nuclear
powers. They both have nuclear weapons into each other, which is a very
dangerous thing and the two should talk about destroying their nuclear arsenals
rather than having tensions about Ukraine,” he said.
RELATED STORIES:
- US behind ‘murderous Ukraine coup’
- 'US allows billions to destabilize Ukraine'
- Obama ‘a mouthpiece of George Soros’
- China-Russia alliance rattles Bilderberg
- ‘Obama barking up the wrong tree’
- US seeking to portray Putin as 'bad boy'
----------------
3.
The Dangers Of Doing Business With Putin’s Russia
Even though there are international
sanctions on Rosneft’s Igor Sechin, Dudley insisted that their business with
Rosneft will continue. “It does not affect our cooperation with the company
itself,” Dudley said, referring to sanctions on Rosneft’s
boss. He was even able to meet Sechin privately.
French oil giant Total S.A. also
signed an agreement with Lukoil – Russia’s second largest oil company – to
explore for shale oil and gas. Total’s chief executive Christophe de Margerie
went to lengths to reassure the Russian hosts. “My message to Russia is simple
– business as usual,” he said at the event.
To be clear, the oil companies are
not legally running afoul of international sanctions. But their collective
shrug in the face of European and American pressure to boycott Russia – along
with the $400 billion natural gas deal Russia signed with
China last week – illustrates the difficulty with which the West will have at
undermining Russia’s energy sector, if it chose to do so. Russia is too big of
a prize for the likes of ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell.
Or viewed another way, the moves to deepen
business in Russia suggest that the world’s biggest oil companies are confident
that the U.S. and Europe won’t be so bold as to truly attack Russia’s energy
machine. By Nick Cunningham, Oilprice.com
=========
4-
RUSSIAN COUNTER-OFFENSIVE ON
THE EASTERN FRONT
Contraofensiva
rusa en el frente del este. http://www.voltairenet.org/article183904.html
RUSSIAN COUNTER-OFFENSIVE ON
THE EASTERN FRONT
by Manlio
Dinucci. Voltaire Network
| 21 May 2014
http://www.voltairenet.org/article183894.html
The tactic of the United States to economically
isolate Russia to prevent it from coming to the aid of the Ukrainian population
has had the opposite effect to what was intended: it is pushing Moscow in the
arms of Beijing, so that, in the long run, the Eastern European-Asian block
which is gaining steam will surpass the power of Western countries.
The agreements’ scope is strategic.
A contract worth $270 billion between the Russian state company Ros- neft and
China’s National Petroleum Company provides that Russia will supply more than
700 million tons of oil to China over the next 25 years. Another contract
provides that the Russian state company Gazprom will supply 38 billion cubic
meters of gas per year to China, by 2018, or about a quarter of what it
provides today to Europe. The Chinese plan investments amounting to $20
billion, concentrated in infrastructure, Moscow plans to strengthen the
pipeline between eastern Siberia and the Pacific, joining it to a 2500-mile
pipeline to supply China.
Beijing is also interested in making
investments in the Crimea, in particular for the production and export of
liquefied natural gas, and for the modernization of agriculture and the
construction of a cereal terminal. At the same time Moscow and Beijing are
planning to abandon the dollar as the currency for trade in the Asian region.
And Russia is planning its own payment system, modeled on China’s Union Pay,
whose credit cards can be used in more than 140 countries, which ranks it
second in the world after Visa.
It’s not going any better for
Washington on the western front. The possibility, proposed by the Obama
administration, of reducing within a decade the gas furnished by Russia to
Europe by more than 25 percent and replacing it with liquefied natural gas
supplied by the United States, is proving to be a bluff. This is confirmed by
the fact that, despite the sanctions announced by Berlin, German companies
continue to invest in the Russian energy industry — the RMA Pipeline Equipment,
a manufacturer of valves for oil and gas pipelines, is opening its largest
facility in the Volga region. And Gazprom has already signed all the contracts,
including one for $2.75 billion, with the Italian company Saipem (Eni) for the
implementation of the South Stream gas pipeline that, bypassing Ukraine, will
bring Russian gas via the Black Sea up to Bulgaria and from there into the EU.
Even if the U.S. were able to block
the South Stream, Russia could divert the gas to China. From now on, the
"East Stream" is open.
--------------
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Here the list,
besides Poroshenko the financier
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