By John Helmer, Moscow If you believe what the Washington and London think-tanks want you to believe, Russia’s days as the world’s dominant oil and gas exporter, blackmailer of Ukrainian independence, extortionist of the hypothermic Germans are numbered. Gazprom is on the rocks! Igor Sechin will shortly be yesterday’s man!! For those who believe, the […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 21st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Long after the great siege generals – Alexander, Napoleon – enunciated the principle of concentrating fire against the weakest points of an enemy’s walls – the Red Army devised the application combining the most explosives for the cheapest outlay in a saturation pattern which didn’t need to be accurate. It was […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 11th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow You don’t have to be a commercial rival of Ziyavudin Magomedov to notice that the billion-dollar business ventures he promises to deliver often fail to materialize. There was his claim, for example, that with his control stake of the United Grain Company (OZK is the Russian acronym), he intended to bid […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 29th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Russian oil company LUKoil plans to launch commercial production of diamonds at its Grib diamond mine in September, the company confirms. It is the first diamond mine to be opened in Russia since Alrosa, the state diamond miner, commissioned the Nyurba mine in Sakha in 2003. Alrosa’s Lomonosov diamond mine, less […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, January 24th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Most American geopolitical risk analysts live in a row of northeastern towns far from the tornado belt. So they don’t understand what sowing the wind, reaping the whirlwind means. The Anglo-American strategists who thought it clever strategy to launch a little war in Libya, kill Muammar Qaddafi, and help themselves to […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Blimps long ago lost their value as a means of cargo transportation, military reconnaissance, or anti-aircraft defence; whilst the helium that fills them – more safely than the combustible hydrogen gas which brought down the Hindenburg in 1937 – is sharply increasing its value in other applications. But the US, which […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 5th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Roman Abramovich was recently able to bamboozle a British judge with no experience of Russia, when the credibility standard was set by Boris Berezovsky. But can his winsome personality persuade President Vladimir Putin and energy chief Igor Sechin that Russia badly needs to acquire an Australian company that has adapted Soviet […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, November 8th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow If Russia’s leading oil trader Gunvor can lose its allocations of crude oil from Rosneft and Surgutneftegas in a flash, and Novatek almost a third of its domestic gas sales in another instant, then Gennady Timchenko, a control shareholder of both companies, has some explaining to do in public. That is, […]

by John Helmer - Friday, November 2nd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow The London Paralympics aren’t over for BP’s chief executive, Bob Dudley. Even if he wins gold, he’s finishing with fewer limbs than he started with. According to the Financial Times version of the negotiation to date between Rosnft, BP, TNK-BP, and between Igor Sechin, Bob Dudley, and Mikhail Fridman, a deal […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, October 18th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Gazprom, Russia’s largest company, has announced a plan to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) it isn’t producing to terminals piping ship fuel into a fleet of vessels which the Summa Capital group, directed by Ziyavudin Magomedov, would like to operate — only they don’t exist either. The scheme is more environmentally […]

by John Helmer - Monday, October 1st, 2012
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