Fun trading for Fund Cuan

Russia Values Oil More Than WarMoscow obviously did not want to cause any additional anxiety amongEuropean consumers. Nor did it want to deal Tbilisi any unnecessarytrump cards for its blame game. From what is possible to deduce fromscarce information provided by official sources, Russia's restraint intargeting Georgia's highly vulnerable energy infrastructure wasconfirmed...Kazakhstan considers to divert oil export route from BTC to RussiaA high level Kazakh official told Turkish business daily Referans thatquestion marks now hang over the security of the BTC pipeline. "Wecould reconsider our decisions on sending Kazak oil to the worldmarket. Changing the (export) route is in our agenda now," the officialwas quoted as saying by Referans.Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the restBut it is in more than the military sphere that the image of aresurgent and powerful Russia is less grounded in reality than itsprojectors often allow. Russia's economic performance is crucially (anddysfunctionally in the longer run) dependent on its energy resources,and there is a critical need for heavy investment in the oil-and-gassector if current revenues are even to be maintained. The country alsohas great social problems (which are felt inside the military and havethe potential to damage its standards and performance) : among them adeclining and aging population, rampant alcoholism, and low malelife-expectancy for men (see Rebecca Kay, "'Being a man' incontemporary Russia", 7 March 2008). These factors must be part of anoverall judgment of the true face of Russian power today; and takentogether they suggest that Russia has far less capacity to undertake aunilateral drive to restore its great-power status than it might appear.Gazprom Falls as Analysts `Shocked' by Spending PlanWilliam Mauldin and Greg Walters, Bloomberg

OAO Gazprom,the world's biggest natural-gas producer, fell in Moscow trading afteranalysts said they were ``shocked'' by the company's plans to raise itsinvestment budget to more than $40 billion this year. ... Russia's natural-gas exporter may raise its investment budgetfor 2008 by about 25 percent, Interfax reported yesterday, citingDeputy Chief Executive Officer Valery Golubev. Gazprom last monthalready increased the budget for 2008 by 16 percent to a record 822billion rubles ($33.8 billion).