Moscow Times: "Combined Reports President Vladimir Putin's top economic adviser said Wednesday that Russia should resist OPEC's calls to reduce oil output as lower prices for crude, its main export, benefited the economy.
"Question: What should we do with OPEC? Answer: Nothing, because OPEC is an unreliable partner, because OPEC is a historically doomed organization, because in the price war declared against us, Russia is in a much more advantageous position than OPEC," Andrei Illarionov told a news conference.
Illarionov, who often takes strong views and has earned himself the reputation of a dissenter, is known to have the president's ear -- and Putin seems to listen to much of his advice. ...."
See also this article
Russia, Oil and Conspiracy Theories
This article is a bit off-kilter, but has good links. It was discussed at this earlier here Thread: Russia, Oil, and Conspiracy Theories (Nov. 27)
At first I thought Russia would sacrifice itself a lot by letting the oil price go down, due to the greater expense of extracting and transporting Russian oil, relative to Saudi. But perhaps Saudi is more expensive, for factors including their debt payment demands. Developing...