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Russian President Vladimir Putin said economic isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) should be ended. Putin has signaled for concrete steps to be taken in this regard. Russian President hosting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an "honorary guest" in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi noted, the "meaningless" embargo imposed on TRNC must be lifted and his country will have direct contacts with both the Turkish and Greek Cypriot societies on the island. The two leaders emphasized their opinions overlapped on many issues. "The first thing we must do is to solve the problem...

Putin and Yushchenko met in Astana on January 11 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is risking his political credibility by blindly defending the Russian-Ukrainian gas deal despite severe criticism of it by Western and Ukrainian experts and a majority of the Ukrainian parliament. Rather than addressing the agreement on its merits, Yushchenko ignores Western critics (some of the most prominent of whom are Orange sympathizers) and imputes political partisan motives to internal critics (whose affiliations range from the leftist opposition to the core pro-democracy community). Yushchenko's stance seems to reflect his quest for accommodation with a suddenly responsive Kremlin in the...

3 January 2006 -- Russian authorities say gas supplies to European countries have been fully restored after a disruption caused by a row with Ukraine over gas prices, while representatives of the Russian and Ukrainian monopoly gas monopolies are scheduled to meet today to discuss the standoff. Russia's state-run natural-gas monopoly Gazprom announced earlier today that it was increasing the amount of gas shipped through pipelines in Ukraine to assure full deliveries to customers in European countries. Gazprom has since said that supplies to European customers were back to normal. Austria and Hungary, which had suffered supply cuts of up...

The abortive interruption of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1 was a humiliating diplomatic blunder. It was an unnecessary crisis, and one that Russia clumsily lost in the court of world public opinion. While Ukraine was threatened with a gas blockade, Russia was voluntarily submitting itself to a two-week information blockade. The entire country was given a holiday from January 1 to 10, with even the newspapers shuttered. The political class fled to their holidays in the sun, and none of the usual Kremlin spin-doctors were deployed to staunch the flood of Western criticism. The Russian case...

Defensive Visit to India Russian President Vladimir Putin began a visit to India yesterday. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov was especially interested in several intrigues in Russian-Indian relations, but none of them went beyond the bounds of that. There were several intrigues surrounding the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Indian capital of Delhi. I was interested in whether or not the Indians had signed an agreement on participation in the creation of a fifth generation of heavy fighter plane. I was truly interested. I couldn't rest until I found out why a country that had recovered its...

“Skirt-fronting” could well become the new buzz word in international diplomacy The possibility of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott shirt-fronting Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Brisbane next month over the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 in Ukrainian sovereign territory with the loss of all on board - including 38 Australians - has receded following Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s 25 minute meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the Asian Europe Summit held in Milan this week. Abbott had vowed: “I’m going to shirtfront Mr Putin. I am going to be saying to Mr...

It seems that Putin's visit to China at the end of May has brought the two countries closer. Russia will not only sell natural gas to China but provide certain military technology support. Meanwhile, China is going to invest in Russia Ironically, last autumn husbands of Chinese vegetable farmers were brutally expelled from southern Russia. Scholars pointed out that a series of anti-Chinese incidents that took place in Russia have reflected the real relationship between China and Russia. After Putin's visit to China, Russians seem very enthusiastic about China. The media keep tracking whether or not China will invest in...

MOSCOW — As the United States launches airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, Russia is condemning the move, and hedging support for the attacks so long as they proceed without the Syrian government’s consent. The Kremlin has no trouble with the intended target — like the United States, Russia wants the Islamic State destroyed and thinks it must be defeated in Syria and Iraq. But as Syria’s unofficial patron and interlocutor in international discussions about how to confront the Islamic State, Russia is insistent that U.S. measures to target militants in Syria lack authority without buy-in from Syrian President...

Vladimir Putin has quite a musical side. The Russian prime minister may have a tough stance on foreign policy, but he also has quite a docile side when it comes to the arts. Putin gave his best rendition of Fats Domino’s classic “Blueberry Hill” for a larger audience at a charity event for cancer in St. Petersburg recently and the A-list crowd could not get enough! The full house was packed with famous faces including Kevin Costner, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Gérard Depardieu and Sharon Stone. OK! NEWS: KATE HUDSON’S HOLLYWOOD HERO — HER “BRILLIANT” MOM GOLDIE HAWN Goldie and...

Who dares gives an honest critique of the new Tzar. The most honest critique gets awarded a Polonium Tequila. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxjetOwwRsw

Crude oil prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, down more than 20 percent just since June, meaning price estimates by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) have been far too pessimistic. And these low prices — and the fear that they could go even lower — are making a number of oil industry people increasingly nervous, with some prediciting that the prices are getting so low that oil companies are going to stop new drilling and even cut back on production from already drilled wells. On October 7, the EIA estimated that prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude...

I’ve learned how the game works, from my perch here at Breitling Energy. For one, we advertise and broadcast Powering America Radio on The Patriot, KEIB 1150 AM in Los Angeles, the USAs 2nd largest media market. It also happens to be the transplanted LA home of the Rush Limbaugh show. On occasion, Chris Faulkner’s “Oil and Gas Today” reports fall within the Limbaugh program (it’s called run-of-schedule in broadcasting….where commercials air randomly through the day).. When they hit his show, here come the emails. People “informing” us of Rush’s bigoted bias and “encouraging” us to not support any station...

"The limit of production in this country (the United States) is being reached, and although new fields undoubtedly await discovery, the yearly (oil) output must inevitably decline, because the maintenance of output each year necessitates the drilling of an increasing number of wells. "Such an increase becomes impossible after a certain point is reached, not only because of a lack of acreage to be drilled, but because of the great number of wells that will ultimately have to be drilled." This assessment could have been written recently about the outlook for oil production from North Dakota's Bakken formation or by...

Petroleum engineers are among the best paid professionals in the United States. Only chief executives and some specialist doctors earned more last year, according to federal government pay data. Petroleum engineers were paid an average of $132,000 a year, with the top 10 percent on more than $187,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). These figures include everyone from the newest graduates to the most experienced engineers with decades of experience, and are based on median earnings in May 2013. Petroleum engineers earned almost four times as much as the average employee across the economy, who was on...

Fed unleashes greatest bubble of all: John Kemp Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:08am EST -- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own -- By John Kemp Like the sorcerer's apprentice, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan have unleashed a series of ever-larger asset bubbles they cannot control. Now the Fed's decision to cut interest rates to between zero and 0.25 percent, coupled with a promise to keep them there for an extended period, and the threat to conduct even more unconventional operations in the longer-dated Treasury market risks the biggest bubble...

The United States imported more than 7 million barrels per day of crude oil during the first seven months of the year, despite the shale boom, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Crude imports have fallen from a peak of almost 14 million barrels per day in 2006, but they still account for almost half the barrels processed by U.S. refineries. Some observers have expressed unease about lifting the ban on crude exports while the United States continues to rely on imports to meet such a high proportion of its needs. "With regard to the oil export question,...

The independent companies at the forefront of the U.S. shale boom will finally earn enough from selling oil and gas to cover their capital expenditures next year, for the first time since 2008. Free cash flow, which measures operating cash flow minus capital spending, for the 25 leading independent oil and gas producers is expected to show a surplus of $2.4 billion in 2015, according to a consensus forecast in the Financial Times. That compares with a shortfall of around $9 billion in 2013 and $32 billion in 2012. ("Shale oil and gas producers' finances lift growth hopes" FT, Aug...

Drilling for oil and gas deposits outside North America has hit the highest level in three decades, led by big exploration and production programmes in the Middle East and Africa. More than 1,300 drilling rigs have been operating on average over the last six months, the greatest number since 1983, according to oilfield services company Baker Hughes. The number of rigs is up 20 percent compared with 2008 and has more than doubled since hitting a nadir in 1999. The boom is being led by the Middle East, where the number of rigs operating has tripled since 1999, and Africa,...

There is nothing remotely surprising about the sharp fall in oil prices over the last four months, except perhaps the timing. The fundamental forces driving prices lower (rising supply outside OPEC from shale and sluggish demand growth as result of conservation and substitution) have been clearly visible for at least two years. "If the shale revolution can be sustained in the United States, and successfully exported to other countries, some combination of OPEC production cuts or lower oil prices to encourage demand and forestall more investment, will be inevitable by 2015-16," I wrote last year ("Saudi Arabia must decide response...

Cutting the cost of everything from salaries and steel pipes to seismic surveys and drilling equipment is the central challenge for the oil and gas industry over the next five years. The tremendous increase in exploration and production activity around the world over the last ten years has strained the global supply chain and been accompanied by a predictable increase in operating and capital costs. When oil and gas prices were rising strongly, petroleum producers and their contractors could afford to absorb cost increases. But as oil and gas production have moved back into line with demand, and prices have...