Chief engineer at BP unit is slain

international | environment | other press Wednesday October 04, 2006 20:02 by Terence

Part of the Russian strategy to control its resources

This is an interesting development considering the recent moves by Russia to effectively try and boot Shell out of Sakhalin-1 over concerns about the environment. And while environmental damage is likely to have been done, it is very unlikely really the concern of the Russian government.

Clearly, the Russian government has decided it made mistakes in the past few years by allowing its main assests and thus levers that enable to act as a World player, to fall into the hands of others. It is quite clear that there has been a change of plan coming from the very top, from Putin himself and we see the way the Sakhalin project has been handled and now in this other joint venture.

And so we have seen yet another move been made in the latest unfolding of this long chess game.

The report said:

The chief engineer at a Siberian subsidiary of the oil company BP's Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, was found shot and killed in Irkutsk over the weekend, the venture confirmed Monday
.......
Ziganshin, 49, was found by his wife in a sauna on Saturday and he had been shot three times including once in the head, the news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing a representative of the local police. The Irkutsk prosecutors are investigating whether the murder was a contract killing,Interfax reported


The report which is also carried at http://www.energybulletin.net/21140.html says:


Gazprom, Russia’s gas monopoly, on Thursday confirmed its interest in buying a stake in TNK-BP in an apparent bear hug on the private Russian shareholders in the 50:50 Anglo-Russian oil joint venture. The move would mark further consolidation of oil assets in state hands ahead of the 2008 presidential elections.


As we enter the post Peak Oil age, Russia is lining up all it's assests, most of which are energy assests to position itself to take maximum advantage of the situation and the last thing that they are going to allow is for other people to owe and control their resources.

This is in contrast to Ireland, which recognising they are a small and military weak country are handing over all their energy assests such as Corrib Gas to multinational corporations like Shell and indeed have in the past few days placed part of the State security apparatus, the Garda at the disposal of them. [See http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78791 ] This clever strategy of simply caving in, means that it avoids widespread violence being metted out upon the population by those large corporations and their own State backers seeking to take these resources. To help make this as peaceful as possible, the Irish government has waviered almost all taxes and royalities.

Full report on the slaying of the BP chief engineer can be found at: