A former Gazprom director sits on his board of directors. This man brags about being part of Food for Oil, and was in Africa – Nigeria, working on business.

Ties to well heel Mormons. Mr. Itkin runs an import- export business in Michigan, home base Russia.

Makes one wonder what is going on.

Well said. Exactly right.

No, licensing blocks and taxing production does not require anything being equal. All Russia has to do is auction off the licensing blocks and tax production, which does not matter a jot whether the oil companies can be trusted or not, as the auctions will be controlled by the Russian government and the measurement of production is remarkably easy.

The Russian priority was and remains to be masters in their own house and they are just one of a number of countries acting in a similar way.

I am well aware that Russia, along with many other countries, see a state monopoly of hydrocarbon extraction as being masters of their own house; my point is that this approach is hopelessly mistaken.

It’s a great, larger than life, story. A certain Les Abrahams claims he was a fixer for the former BP boss Lord Browne. He revealed his rip roaring activities on behalf of the oil company in an article in the Sunday Mail. It seems that BP tried to sue the paper for defamation but lost. It further seems that the story was then the subject of a D notice or its modern equivalent and suppressed in the media by the British government. A notable highlight is where a British Home secretary on a BP hospitality trip in Baku got drunk and had to be rescued from the Azerbaijani police after curfew.
“I urged him not to draw attention to us, because we weren’t meant to be still on the streets. But then a van load of police armed with Kalashnikovs pulled up and asked us what we were doing.

“He said, “I am a British politician…” I urged him to be quiet, but then he said to one of the policemen, “If you don’t take that f***ing Kalashnikov out of my face I’m going to stick it up your f***ing arse.” With that, we were arrested and shoved at gunpoint into the back of the van.

It makes you proud to be British. Abrahams relates how he was recruited by MI6. He claims that MI6 chief John Scarlett helped engineer the coups that brought Aliyef to power in Azerbaijan and that BP signed its first big oil deal one month after he came to power. Thanks to the internet it is all still there on http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg121418.html or search ‘Hookers, spies, coups and cash…how BP spent £45m to win ‘Wild East’ oil rights’ on Google. Abrahams was to publish a book entitled “Our man in Baku” but nothing has been heard of it so far. Perhaps, as the lawyers say, a settlement has been arrived at, in the time honoured way. About Aliyef see also http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5580.htm from the Washington Post of January 2004.

“Why do you need to trust the oil companies? Taxing production is a remarkably easy thing to do, as it requires only a flow meter on an export pipeline or somebody to count ships. I’m not sure how you think the oil companies would cheat.”

All other things being equal yes but they are not. The Russian priority was and remains to be masters in their own house and they are just one of a number of countries acting in a similar way. Oil companies are inextricably linked with the different intelligence services. After all most of our troubles in Iran are the result of the activities of the Anglo-Iranian oil company aka BP, MI6 and the CIA when to protect British oil interests they organised the overthrow of the democratic Mossedec and installed the Shah as a dictator.
What we have to remember about Putin is that all this is just the tip of the iceberg and that as the former head of FSB he more than anybody knows what went on under Yeltsin, in the former Soviet Republics and elsewhere in the world of energy where great wealth coexisted with total poverty creating a huge opportunity for bribery. This explains, and in my opinion justifies, his evident contempt for Western protestations about democracy, a free press and corruption.

I try, I try… (sniff)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070730.shtml
the truth on who actually destroyed Nigeria will emerge.

Western hypocrisy and pretence gives me runny stomach, I ve said it before, and will continue to say it. The Advance Fee Fraud issue is equally treated with pretence.
If you have another minute read one of my articles

http://www.kwenu.com/publications/okoh/419victim_pitied.htm

Much the same could be said about successive Nigerian governments. Shell makes a handy scapegoat for the ills of the Nigerian oil industry, but it is poor governance which is the root of the problem.

Why do you need to trust the oil companies? Taxing production is a remarkably easy thing to do, as it requires only a flow meter on an export pipeline or somebody to count ships. I’m not sure how you think the oil companies would cheat.

Rusal is already in Nigeria, and they are doing really great now, Gazprom is coming and we will be more than happy to receive them, I know that the Americans will be having a sleepless night, but if Nigeria has a Putin, that is to say someone that is ready to protect the Nigerian interest then the Gazprom issue is a done deal.

Your comment on how Shell would have used army to stamp out the angry local have opened the deceptive nature of western democracy, so the whole issue of human right is fear of what the press will write and not a true care for human dignity. That is why 50 years after, Shell cannot point out to any meaningful social programme in a land where it made trillions of dollars.