The Future Is in the Pipeline

wsj.com ^ | June 19, 2008 | EDWARD LUCAS

[Tailgunner Joe]

Petrostate
By Marshall Goldman
(Oxford, 244 pages, $27.95)

Russia, with its huge natural-gas reserves, uses its monopoly on east-west pipelines to promote Russia's political interests -- and reacts toughly when challenged. Marshall Goldman sets out these disturbing truths in "Petrostate," a bleak and yet spirited account of Russia's energy politics. The West, Mr. Goldman makes clear, should be wincing at its own vulnerability.

The story, as Mr. Goldman tells it, starts with the first oil boom in the czarist era, when Russia and America together produced 97% of the world's oil. Foreign companies were booted out of the Soviet Union by Lenin and Stalin, only to be invited back in again (on different terms) when their technological expertise was missed. After the fall of communism there was a reverse involvement: Foreigners rushed into Russia to help set up a post-communist economy, only to retreat a few years later.

In between came the era of Soviet go-it-alone energy policy, when oil and gas revenues became the vital prop for Leonid Brezhnev's ailing planned economy. As in so many other parts of the Soviet system, ingenuity battled with incompetence, and incompetence won.

Standing in the nerve center of Gazprom's Moscow headquarters -- staring at a 100-foot wall that electronically displays the spiderweb of natural-gas pipelines spreading across Europe from Russia -- Mr. Goldman marvels: "What an empowering feeling! Should they choose to, those Gazprom functionaries could not only cut off natural gas from the furnaces and stoves of 40 percent of Germany's homes but also the natural gas that many German factories need for manufacturing."

In other words, Ronald Reagan's warnings in the 1980s, about the political dangers of Western Europe's dependence on Soviet gas, now seem prescient. Today Western Europe relies on Russia for half of its natural-gas imports.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks TJ.

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, that big 1982 Siberian explosion?
Fort Worth Star-Telegram / The New York Times | 2/3/04 | William Safire
Posted on 02/03/2004 9:13:42 PM PST by Valin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071087/posts

Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets
The New York Times | February 27, 2004
David E. Hoffman reviews “At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War”
Posted on 02/27/2004 12:47:11 AM PST by Cincinatus’ Wife
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1086487/posts