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http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/1/5/113553/3324
The FT really overdoes it this morning with its main headline, as shown to the right, and the accompanying article.
A gas "grab"? Are they sending the Russian military to invade Nigeria and take over Nigerian gas fields? Are they starting a naval blockade to prevent Nigeria from exporting its gas? Worse, apparently:
Wow. Investing? Now that's scary! So what should we do exactly? How can we force Russia not to control the gas on their territory, and not to invest in other countries? Should we invade them preemptively? Should we stop selling them armor-plated Mercedes cars? Not give visas to Russian leaders' girlfriends?A senior Nigerian oil industry official, who declined to be named, said the company was offering to invest in energy infrastructure in return for the chance to develop some of the biggest gas deposits in the world.
What exactly is the point of these headlines? Given that the Russians will just either shrug and ignore it, or ratchet up their own anti-Western rhetoric, what's the real purpose? If gas dependency were the real issue, the logical suggestion would be to reduce our gas consumption (our only real weapon against Russia), but this is obviously not on the table. So the goal must be domestic, and it must be political. And despite my best efforts, I can only think of two (related) things: fearmongering and distraction.
Fearmongering because that helps sell authoritarian policies, increase military budgets, and rally the populace against an external threat;
Distraction because it avoids a serious discussion of what a sane energy policy would be (hint: focused on demand reduction rather than supply increase, and on increased regulation rather than market liberalisation, to promote renewables and non carbon spewing technologies rather than banker- and trader-preferred gas-fired plants), and, as above, it puts the blame for increasing high energy prices on (easily identifable) evil foreigners rather than on domestic ideology.
у России никаких рычагов давления на Нигерию нет и не предвидится, чистый бизнес, да и не монополист газпром в мировом то масштабе есть и покрупнее нефте-газовые компании.