Tensions Brew Over Oil Exports

Winston Churchill once compared observing a Soviet power struggle to watching two dogs fight under a carpet. Much the same could be said for the latest twist in the tussle for control of Russian oil exports.

The oil market was buzzing last week with news that two powerful oil officials in the world’s second-biggest petroleum exporter had quit — one from crude pipeline monopoly Transneft and the other from the Federal Energy Agency.

It soon emerged that the agency’s head, Sergei Oganesyan, had also offered to go but would stay on for now. Then, over the weekend, the Industry and Energy Ministry said it wanted to dissolve the agency, which was given the role of coordinating oil exports when it was spun off from the ministry just two years ago.

In keeping with the 20th-century British prime minister’s dictum, there has been no official explanation for the upheaval. But Interfax on Sunday quoted an Industry and Energy Ministry source as saying the agency “in its current form does not fully answer the duties” required of a government organ.

Moscow Times