Why does Russian energy giant Gazprom wield such power?

(CNN) — Riding through the streets of Moscow or flipping through channels of Russian TV, it’s difficult to escape messages from the country’s natural gas monopoly, Gazprom.

“I’m driving under a huge Gazprom sign right now,” Yuri Pogorely, vice-president of Interfax, the Russian business news wire, said in a phone interview. Television ad campaigns have promoted the company as a “national treasure” and, more recently, the business that makes “dreams come true.”

“It can make someone think, why does a Russian monopoly need this kind of branding? After all, there are other state-owned companies that don’t present themselves as a symbol of Russia,” Pogorely said. “But Gazprom is not just any company.”

If the Soviet
Union promoted
its interests
through satellite states
and military
prowess, Russia today
flexes its might
on the global stage
through its vast
oil and natural
gas fields.
And no company
exemplifies
this more
than Gazprom.

CNN