Russia Muscles Shell on $20 billion Natural Gas Project

From today's Guardian:

Shell is being forced by the Russian government to hand over its controlling stake in the world's biggest liquefied gas project, provoking fresh fears about the Kremlin's willingness to use the country's growing strength in natural resources as a political weapon.

After months of relentless pressure from Moscow, the Anglo-Dutch company has to cut its stake in the $20bn Sakhalin-2 scheme in the far east of Russia in favour of the state-owned energy group Gazprom.

The Russian authorities are also threatening BP over alleged environmental violations on a Siberian field in what is seen as a wider attempt to seize back assets handed over to foreign companies when energy prices were low.

As we've noted before, this probably isn't a smart long-term strategy. In any case, Europe better start building more nuclear power plants, or else be at the mercy of Gazprom.

Technorati tags: Energy, Electricity, Home Heating, Natural Gas, Oil, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Electricity