Russian wildcat numbers down

It seams like the Yukos saga is hiting their exploration efforts. They can’t pay their contractors so they aren’t able to perform the drilling to support their reserves or production. The tax uncertainty has spilled over to the other Russian majors as well since they also have curtailed exploratory drilling.
Evidently the Russian government has the novel idea that most of the windfall profits of high oil prices should go to the state.
It looks like the start of a long term trend where Russia behaves more and more like a member of OPEC rather than a free market economy. This may be good news from a peak oil perspective since it means the production plateau would begin at a lower level and be extended in length.

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