MOSCOW, May 18 (RIA Novosti)
Russia, U.S. missed the chance to denuclearize the world / Russia keeps fighting Nabucco project / Gazprom to supply coal gasification technology to Vietnam / Rosneft to explore offshore oil deposits in Abkhazia

Kommersant

Russia, U.S. missed the chance to denuclearize the world

Russia and the Untied States, the world's two nuclear superpowers, have missed the chance to settle the problem of global security, because the world has become a multipolar structure, writes a Russian analyst.
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine, writes that when the Kremlin proposed liquidating nuclear weapons in the early 1980s, the White House rejected the idea as a trap. The Soviet Union, which then had an overwhelming superiority in conventional armaments, would have greatly benefited from that proposal.
In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama has proclaimed the objective of building a world without nuclear weapons. However, this time it is the United States that is superior to Russia in all other types of weapons, which means that nuclear arms are Russia's only guarantee of security.
In 1986 in Reykjavik, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan nearly agreed on a treaty that would have cleansed the world of nuclear weapons within 10 years, the analyst writes. However, the U.S. president did not want to sacrifice his Star Wars, the forerunner of the current global anti-ballistic missile system.
The ABM program is now on the agenda again, but unlike their predecessors, the Obama team does not consider its implementation a priority. However, this does not mean that it will abandon it altogether, Lukyanov writes. Instead, it will postpone it, though not because the U.S. wants to cheat Russia, but because the issue has grown beyond the framework of bilateral relations.
When the issue was discussed in Iceland in 1986, it was clear from whom the United States wanted to protect itself. Had President Reagan believed the Kremlin's sincerity then, he might have sacrificed the Strategic Defense Initiative.
But today Russia is no longer the only country that could launch a nuclear missile strike at the United States. Given the forecast speed of nuclear proliferation, the number of potential enemies of the United States will keep growing, and so no American president will deem it possible to terminate the Star Wars program.
At the same time, a frozen ABM project will hang like the sword of Damocles over humankind, undermining the mutual trust that is crucial for relations in this delicate sphere, the Russian analyst writes.
On the other hand, Russia and the United States could join forces to create a common ABM system, which would greatly enhance strategic stability. But this entails abandoning the Cold War logic and pushing the reset button on bilateral relations. Unfortunately, the probability of the latter is so far minuscule.

Vedomosti, Kommersant

Russia keeps fighting Nabucco project

Russia is desperately trying to preserve its dominant position on the European gas market. Last weekend saw a series of new moves.
Russia's Gazprom announced it would double the throughput capacity of its planned South Stream pipeline, from 31 billion to 63 billion cubic meters; the prime ministers of Russia and Turkey, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said they would begin discussing details of expanding the capacity of another pipeline, Blue Stream. A third pipeline leg laid across the Black Sea bed would boost its capacity from 16 billion to 24 billion cubic meters.
Gazprom-led South Stream, a project to ship Central Asian gas to Europe, obviously rivals Nabucco, another project lobbied for by the European Union. Both pipelines are planned to carry the same gas to the same consumers and only differ insignificantly in routes.
Both projects have been under discussion for several years, each trying to win partners. Gazprom is leading the race at the moment. The problem is the project's cost, which neared $28 billion even before the expansion plans if we include the construction of the Caspian pipeline, which is crucial for supplying the resources to fill South Stream.
Nabucco will cost half that price. Moreover, European countries have been trying for months to explain to Gazprom that they do not want South Stream. They have downgraded their gas import plans and are determined to diversify suppliers.
Gazprom has neither the financial resources to build the pipeline, with its earnings plummeting along with the general economic downturn, nor reliable suppliers to fill it with gas, since the Russian monopoly has a commitment to ship at least 110 billion cubic meters of gas a year via Ukraine. This amount, added to the Nord Stream plans, will leave no resources for South Stream. This implies that Gazprom is willing to make a giant investment into a clearly economically infeasible project only to uphold its political influence.
Valery Nesterov from the Troika Dialog brokerage says that the announced plans to augment the throughput capacity of both Streams were intended to impress Europe and make Nabucco seem small and insignificant by comparison. "Russia might as well rename Gazprom a 'ministry for foreign energy policy,'" joked Mikhail Korchemkin, director of the East European Gas Analysis consultancy.

RBC Daily

Gazprom to supply coal gasification technology to Vietnam

On Friday, Russian energy giant Gazprom signed an agreement to supply its underground coal-gasification technology to Vietnam's Dong Duong Co., which will use the technology for gas production in the Red River coal basin in the northern part of the country.
Analysts said Russia and Vietnam were unlikely to expand their cooperation in the sphere of oil and gas production soon.
In February 2009, Gazprom obtained licenses for developing blocks 129, 130, 131 and 132 on the little-studied continental shelf in southern Vietnam. The Vietgazprom joint venture involving Gazprom and Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) will implement the contract on a production-sharing basis.
Russia will finance all prospecting operations in Vietnam, while Gazpromviet, another joint venture between Gazprom and PetroVietnam, has been invited to develop the Nagumanov gas-condensate deposit in Russia's Orenburg Region.
This June, Vietgazprom is to launch exploratory drilling at the Bao Vang deposit and the Bao Den, Bao Chang and Coastal structures, part of the shelf's 112th block, developed since 2000.
However, coal-gasification technology transfers do not demonstrate more active bilateral cooperation. "Russian-Vietnamese cooperation remains sluggish," said Dmitry Abzalov, an analyst with the Center for Current Russian Politics think-tank. Such cooperation primarily aims to exchange technology for equipment-production orders in Russia.
The above-mentioned coal gasification technology can be used to develop inland deposits, while Russia has some problems operating in offshore areas, Abzalov said. Moreover, Moscow and Hanoi continue to debate specific corporate-control and financing and production-sharing terms, primarily in the sphere of oil production.
Abzalov said more active cooperation in adjoining sectors, including the gas industry, was possible only after these problems were resolved.

Vremya Novostei

Rosneft to explore offshore oil deposits in Abkhazia

Abkhazia, which has so far received energy resources from Turkey, Romania and Russia, hopes to be able to produce its own hydrocarbons.
According to a source in the republic's government, Abkhazia's Economy Ministry and Russia's largest state-controlled crude producer, Rosneft, will sign a memorandum of cooperation in a week.
It is rumored that deposits in the Black Sea off Abkhazia contain hundreds of millions of tons of oil. But analysts say their development could be hampered by economic and legal problems.
The deposits were discovered back during the Soviet era and estimated to hold between 300 and 500 million tons of oil.
Anatoly Dmitriyevsky, director of the Institute of Oil and Gas at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the region was highly promising in terms of mineral resources.
"The commercial value of Black Sea deposits was confirmed during the Soviet era, when the Chernomorneftegaz trust was set up," he said. "Besides, the region has the necessary infrastructure such as ports and pipelines, and potential consumers nearby."
However, the Caucasus is a seismically active region, which entails production difficulties, Dmitriyevsky added.
Vladimir Feigin, director of Moscow's Institute of Energy and Finance, said: "Oil production in such natural conditions is much more profitable than in the north, but there are also problems. For example, oil production in the Black Sea could prove to be very expensive because the deposits are located at a large depth."
Feigin also said that foreign companies were unlikely to develop the Abkhazian resources. According to some sources, the Abkhazian government had tried to involve foreign companies in geological exploration of the offshore deposits, but they failed to agree because of the republic's uncertain legal status.

RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.