OMV sale fuels fears about Russian influence over gas pipelines

By Sarah Arnott

Tuesday, 31 March 2009

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OMV, the Austrian energy company, announced the €1.4bn (£1.3bn) sale of its 21 per cent stake in Hungary’s Mol to a Russian oil and gas group yesterday, prompting speculation about Russia’s expanding influence in the Balkans.

Mol immediately denied any involvement in OMV’s transaction with Surgutneftgas, emphasising that the shares were bought as “an attractive investment opportunity” and that the group would stick to its own strategy.

But concerns about Kremlin influence have a strong hold - not least with regards plans for the Nabucco pipeline from Azerbaijan, which would compete with the Russia-supplied South Stream project.

Just before Christmas Gazprom bought Serbia’s state-owned oil and gas company on the condition that South Stream get the go-ahead to be built through the country. And despite repeated denials from Mol, rumours that its angling for a majority share in Croatia’s INA are a prelude to selling it to the Russians persist. Surfutneftgas’s purchase of a major stake in Mol will not help.

“Mol is still in Hungarian hands but it is quite clear that the overall trend, whether they deny it or not, is Russia looking to take control of the region,” Jonathan Simpson, a partner at Paul Hastings, said. “It now owns major stakes in Serbia, Hungary and Croatia, which means they can stop pipelines that they don’t agree with and control distribution in those markets.”

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Russian Influence

piddle1 wrote:

Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 10:56 am (UTC)

Wasn't it Tony Blair who mocked peoples concerns a few years ago about letting Russia have too much control over energy supply. What a naive idiot.

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SinoRussianLevant energy blackmail alliance

delfmast wrote:

Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 09:50 pm (UTC)

WastingtonDC: We thank the SinoRussianLevant energy blackmail alliance, and their new best friends, the illegal OPEC cartel's terror financiers for the education they are providing old Europe about giving a hostile regime a dead cat, hoping they won't swing it, at us, yet. It is all to the good, if the African pirates, and the evil energy alliance use piracy, and the SinoRussian alliance's expanding energy weapon in an overt attempt to bludgeon old Europe into silence, as they cozy up to the Levant's terror regimes, and work to force Ukraine, and the other most vulnerable, or energy rich, of the USSR detritus nations back into some unholy arrangement with Russia. If we throw in the extortion in progress, with Europe's heating oil shut off, mid winter, yearly, as they test the mettle of the US MSM's Messiah President, and the free world's patience, or weakness, need we wonder, when, not if, the SRL will let their Iranian proxy, or some of their hired hoodlums, squeeze the Straits of Hormuz, to test their strength, our weakness, or both. With dozens of ships now pirated, and Chinese and Russian ships roaring in to heroic action against the pirates, while they are buying up , for chump change aid, with no strings attached, the Levant, and all other failed African states it is time we looked to our ex-colonial patches. The vicious dictators now savaging a large part of Africa's and Asia's peoples, the evil SRL alliance, Mugabe, the Burma junta, and Chavez comprise a clarion call for a Free World Monroe Doctrine, to protect the colonial area peoples we savaged for centuries from their new best friends. Sarko, of France has awakened, and as our natural enemies put a bit of stick about, perhaps even Germany will realize that business as usual, like providing Iran with hard cash and dual use materials, to pursue the death of Israel, and speed up their nuclear terror proxy bomb supply program, is an "unwise choice". We will wake up, cast off our well earned guilt trips related to centuries of exploitation of our ex-colonies, and act, now, to protect all our former colonies, in our various patches, from wholesale purchase by Russia, and China, or we will watch the evil alliance add a good part of the world's enslaved peoples, along with their various nation's commodities to their unholy alliance's power base. Acting in concert, we can use North American tar, sands, and shale petroleum deposits, with liquid transport fuel from vast American coal deposits in an energy Marshall plan, to somewhat relieve old Europe from Russian blackmail while we all abandon petroleum for transport and base loads. We can, again impoverish Russia, and Ougo Chavez, and put Opec's terror financiers into penury, this time, just as President Reagan did, with the help of Saudi Arabia, and the feckless Russian dictators of those days, to destroy the USSR. We can do that to them, or accept what they are undoubtedly doing to us, right now. Or, the lazy free world can withdraw, business as usual, and leave it to Pax American Coalition, to do the heavy lifting, if the Messiah President chooses that path.

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