Ruminations on Russia

The Russia Blog, see link below, is some form of propaganda tool designed to paint a contrasting picture of Russia from the propaganda written by the western MSM.  As such, I have no particular problem with it.  However, where it falls apart in its role as purveyor of good news where little exists is that it knows as much about business as my now dead grandfather.  The business stuff peddled by Charles Ganske is plain laughable, which is OK because he has been hired to pump out stories not to understand them, more entertaining is the crap peddled by Kuznetsov from FINAM.  As convincing a sell signal on FINAM as you would ever need.  I knew more about investing at kindergarten.

Which brings me slowly to the point of this post.  I have been trying to discover the logic of bringing Total in to Shtockman (so naiive; logic and the Russian government in the same sentence) so amongst other trusted sources I went to The Russia Blog to see if it would peddle me an insight.  Instead, is this heap of intellectual dog shit .  I cannot even bring myself to copy all of it below.  (More on Total / GAZP in another post.)

Two of the more egregious sentences are quoted below, but its pretty difficult differentiating between the rubbish:

Last week France's Total S.A. agreed to a 25% stake in a major Russian oil and gas project, while the state-owned firm OAO Rosneft forged a new partnership with Royal Dutch Shell.

In an attempt to head off any future supply crunch, the Russian government is now allowing Gazprom to raise rates across the board, while encouraging the development of coal and nuclear power plants to diversify fuel sources for the power grid.

I attempted to comment on the post but I was told that it did not exist.  So below is my comment in full and without editing:

If you have even the slightest pretense at intellectual honesty you will re-write this entry somewhat along the following lines;
1. BP, Shell and Total sign long-term meaningless agreements to develop russian reserves after having had to sell down their holdings in major opportunities after pressure was exerted for them to do just that - the new owner being allowed to continue to do what the previous owner was not allowed to.
2. Oil production at post-soviet peak, but declines now forecast by everyone as the easy post-soviet workovers are now done and no one has invested in exploration for almost 2 decades.
3. Total, a company with no arctic experience brought in to Shtockman to....increase arctic experience.
4.Gazprom, despite having a monopoly on export cannot meet current domestic demand, ask Luzhkov, and is getting Russian local prices up to export netback whilst keeping its export and pipeline monopoly.  To hide the fact that it has not invested in upstream for 2 decades is buying in to coal and electricity, it being easier to engineer a purchase in the kremlin that find gas in the arctic - see total.

we all know that you write propaganda, sometimes its ok, this however flies in the face of all established facts.  the trouble with hiring liberal arts students to write is that they know nothing about business and cannot be bothered to research it and don't understand it when they do.