--- Ira Glazer <ira at yanua.com> wrote:
>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,1666841,00.html
>
> [this guy evans is really creepy; he's the
> embodiment of the toxic
> mixture of texas capitalism and fundamentalist
> christianity
> supposedly he's the one that got bush to become a
> born-again}
>
> A former cabinet minister and close personal friend
> of George Bush may
> be appointed head of Russia's leading state oil
> company, it was reported
> yesterday.
>
> Donald Evans, who was until early this year US
> commerce secretary, has
> been offered the position of head of the board of
> directors of Rosneft
> by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the
> respected business daily,
> Kommersant, reported yesterday.
>
> If the appointment is confirmed, Mr Evans would be
> the second former
> senior foreign official to join the Kremlin's
> expanding energy empire.
> Last week, the former German chancellor Gerhard
> Schröder accepted a job
> as chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline, a
> project to ferry gas
> between Russia and Germany that he helped broker.
>
> A source close to Mr Evans in Washington last night
> declined to confirm
> the report, but said the former US official had met
> President Putin
> during his visit to Moscow last week. "He does not
> disclose the contents
> of private meetings," the source said, adding that
> Mr Evans had met
> other officials in the hope of improving business
> ties. Kommersant
> reported that Mr Evans also met the head of Rosneft,
> Sergei Bogdanchikov.
>
> When asked about the report hours after it was
> published, the deputy
> minister for economic development, Andrei Sharonov,
> said the appointment
> of well-known foreign specialists to head Russian
> companies was "a
> positive fact that kills several birds with one
> stone".
>
> Since Mr Putin's re-election in 2004 the Kremlin has
> been hastily
> expanding the state's energy companies. Rosneft
> recently bought part of
> Yukos's production arm for what some regarded as a
> low price after state
> bailiffs seized it in their assault on the business
> empire of Kremlin
> critic and billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
>
> Gazprom, Russia's biggest company, which is valued
> at £55bn, has also
> seen rapid expansion, including the NEGP.
>
> Analysts believe the Kremlin is seeking to
> re-establish its position as
> a superpower by placing Russia's massive energy
> resources directly under
> its political control. Yesterday Moscow flexed its
> muscles over one
> unruly pro-western neighbour, Ukraine, with Gazprom
> saying it could cut
> gas off from January 1 if price negotiations were
> not resolved.
>
>
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