Russia loses patience with the West.

[Az]

To be honest, it's completely idiotic for a company on the scale of Gazprom to rely on foreign know-how.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Az
To be honest, it's completely idiotic for a company on the scale of Gazprom to rely on foreign know-how.

I find that an odd statement. Even ExxonMobil has areas where it has less expertise than some other corporation out there. Its very usual for the biggest corporate players out there to acknowledge this and to actively seek partnerships that bring additional expertise to the table

Oh and they also like to share the risk in a lot of cases.


So while a given company might be able to do a project competently, adding expertise never hurts and getting caught up in the nationality of the contributing corp, doesn't make much sense to me.

[Az]

Yeah, getting caught up in the nationality doesn't make much sense, unless you're owned by the government - Synergy of companies and economic systems is more prevalent in the private sector than it is in the government one, in many cases.

As to risk and expertise, It's quite possible that the leadership of Gazprom feels it has all the expertise it needs, and feels it's ready to undertake this project completely on it's own.

WRT my quote, what I meant is that a company that is so large should have it's own technological and expertise base wide enough to cover the vast majority of cases.

[PLATO]

I can't tell if the field is in international waters or not. Does anyone know?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by PLATO
I can't tell if the field is in international waters or not. Does anyone know?

What do you mean by international waters?

In most offshore areas, the jurisdiction of the neighbor state to seabed resources is acknowledged out to 200 miles.(thats the exclusive economic zone but international waters begins much closer in)

For seabed resources beyond that distance there is an existing UN convention on how to handle them although my recollection is that very few nations have gotten around to ratifying it yet. But the basics of the convention was that the neighboring coastal state would have jurisdiction over seabed resources on the adjoining continental shelf but that a small royalty would be payable to some arm of the UN.

I know that Canada has licensed and regulated drilling outside its 200 mille EEZ but there has yet to be a commercial find .

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Az
Yeah, getting caught up in the nationality doesn't make much sense, unless you're owned by the government - Synergy of companies and economic systems is more prevalent in the private sector than it is in the government one, in many cases.

Ain't that the truth!!

Originally posted by Az


As to risk and expertise, It's quite possible that the leadership of Gazprom feels it has all the expertise it needs, and feels it's ready to undertake this project completely on it's own.

and they probably can do it comptently. But with a competent partner(s) they should do it better. I know that doing a heavy oil structure with a certain type of facility, Chevron felt they were the leaders among their partners. But they definitely felt good at being able to tour a recently built facility run by their partner Norsk Hydro and obtain details of their lessons learned. ON such large projects it is usual that there are numerous things that can be done better. . .. and they got access and information that Norsk Hydro would never share otehrwise.

Also "peer review" where partner companies take detailed looks at the plans often reveal many ways to do things better.

Now that experience was within Chevron -- a not so badly resourced company itself -- they often found ways to leverage off their partners' abilities.

I'm sure the Gazprom folks have to think they are able to handle the job and I don't know enough about them to assess or doubt their abilities. But the very biggest oil companies in the world feel they do projects better when they have the ability to draw on the experiences of others.

Originally posted by Az

WRT my quote, what I meant is that a company that is so large should have it's own technological and expertise base wide enough to cover the vast majority of cases.

And they do for the hundreds of routine wells and projects that an oil company does. But offshore projects in a harsh environment are a beast onto themselves.

From wiki

The Shtokman field (also: Stockman field; in Russian: ¬º¬ä¬à¬Ü¬Þ¬Ñ¬ß¬à¬Ó¬ã¬Ü¬à¬Ö ¬Þ¬Ö¬ã¬ä¬à¬â¬à¬Ø¬Õ¬Ö¬ß¬Ú¬Ö), one of the world's largest natural gas fields, lies in the Russian portion of the Barents Sea, 600 km north of Kola Peninsula. Its reserves are estimated at 3.2 trillion m©ø. The sea depth in the area averages about 350 m.

Natural gas reserves were discovered in 1988, but the field was not developed owing to extreme arctic conditions and the depth of the sea.



The development costs are estimated at USD15 billion to USD20 billion. The gas production is planned to be running by 2015. All extraction facilities will be located under water. Originally it was thought the production would be shipped via LNG to the United States, however Gazprom has now indicated that the majority of it would be sold to Europe via the planned Nord Stream pipeline. For this purpose, the pipeline from the Shtokman field to the Murmansk Oblast and further to Volkhov in the Leningrad Oblast will be built. There will still be some LNG produced at the site though, mostlikely in Vidyaevo, Murmansk Oblast.

This project seems like a beast !!! Any company that says it has all the expertise needed is delusional -- SIX HUNDRED km NORTH of KOLA !!

THat project will have so many unique features that it will be interesting to see how close they come to that budget and that cost

[Dinner]

This has nothing to do with Russia losing patience with the west and everything to do with Putin's desire to nationalize the entire energy sector. Stupid people will buy Putin's nationalist retoric about it all being for the good of Russia but the realists will recognize that this is all just about Putin's personal desire for power. That's the reason he has stolen, yes stolen, the companies of his political critics and then stolen the oil rights from western companies after they had spent BILLIONS of dollars locating oil in Russia. Putin just wants power and he will ignore or break any law or agreement to get it.

Is it any wonder why investment into Russia is shrinking fast? Who wants to invest in a country were the meglamanic in charge might steal everything on a whim?