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I do not know. My guess is that they stole the property of Royal Dutch Shell.

100% correct sir. I'm impressed. That's how the real game is played in real time by real players. Your "free markets" are a hallucination compared to how the Russians and Chinese play the oil/energy game. Thugs know how to play this game and laugh themselves to sleep each night at those who depend on free markets for energy

What happened is that for years Shell did the hard work and tech while the Russians swilled vodka. Once Sakhalin panned out the Russians forced Royal Dutch Shell to lower its participation from 55% to 27%. Gazprom (Putin's mafia friends) grabbed what Shell was forced to surrender

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/02/05/8399125/index.htm The news was stunning, even if rumors had been flying: Shell (Charts) was halving its ownership in the $22 billion project, cutting its stake from 55% to 27.5%,

Well, there you have it.

I liked this part:

"A guy says, 'Give me half of what is in your pocket, or I shoot you and kill you,'" says Oppenheimer oil analyst Fadel Gheit. "You give him half and say, 'Thank God I am alive to live another day.' They could have lost all of it."

not to sound like a dick here but if you do bussiness in Russia you deserve what you get. Frankly I don’t care how much oil they have there, I still wouldn’t touch it with a nine foot pole. Everything In russia ends up nationalized, its just a matter of how much you can squeak out before it happens.

If I ever do get into the oil bussiness in one of those commie countries one the of the things I’ll do is plant explosives at key points and set them off the moment troops land in my property. Send them right back to square one.