Heh! This is very true, but the British rules would be extremely difficult for a company like Rosneft to follow. Corporate management is a huge factor in complying with UK HSE rules, and Rosneft’s just isn’t robust or transparent enough. Shell struggles to comply with the HSE at Stanlow from time to time, I think Rosneft would fall at the first hurdle.

Aleks – I think British concerns about the oil refinery shutting down are more related to a previous oil shortage (in September 2000) than to wider considerations.

Happily I was out of the country at the time (in Russia, as it happens), but essentially truck drivers unhappy at the high cost of oil blockaded oil refineries across the country, shutting off the country’s petrol supply.

End result: Panic buying of petrol for a while, and then stocks pretty much ran out.

Amusingly, the ‘high’ cost of oil the truckers were protesting about was $30. How times change.

If Rosneft bought the refinery, it would lose its operating license within minutes. Rosneft’s management systems with regards health, safety, and environmental issues would come nowhere close to satisfying the UK’s Health and Safety Executive.

I was wondering of possible down the line repercussions of the shut down of the grangemouth oil refinery (and the forties pipeline) in Scotland? I get the impression that despite there techincally being no problem (i.e. high stocks etc.) it is quite a strong impact in a way the Russia/Ukraine cut-offs didn’t (i.e. it enters the public consciousness more strongly) and how it could be wielded politically in a punch up with Russia or influence domestic politics. Or, would Rosneft (if it had bought the refinery for example) would have handled the situation with workers better than the current private company that recenty bought it? Imagine the flak from the press….

I think the pattern is for the US to be disengaging from Western Europe in many ways, and concentrating on the Far East, meddling a little in Eastern Europe as it goes.

Some have characterized the current and possible future Russia-West differences as having a relationship more akin to the old Cold War relationship between France and the US. A blend of differences and mutual agreement.

The again, there is ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’. Whereas the US did not directly supply arms to Israel, there remains a question as to whether it turned a blind eye, in particular to the transfers that I commented upon above. France and the UK blew their influence with the 1956 Suez Crisis debacle, so it is hard to see how the US who filled the remaining vacuum in the middle east could have been caught unawares.

On the Libyan thing, Gadaffi might be encouraging Russia’s interest as a counter balance to the EU’s interest in securing the export of Libya’s energy to the EU. There’s been a lot of talk about the Caspian, Azerbaidjan etc., but Libya normally falls under the radar when it comes to energy…

One step forward. What of the US? Russia continues to make deals with european states (Hungary on South Stream, Germany on the baltic thing, Italy possibly on a Libyan deal), so despite the greater heated words, there seems to still be no effect on FDI and business between Russia and the EU. Germany and France swatted the NATO summit in Bucharest over Georgia and the Ukraine and now Berlusconi is back on the scene.

We’re certainly set for a fascinating few years. Whither NATO and the US in the grand european scheme of things???

This isn’t quite right, Andy. The US imposed an arms embargo on Israel from 1947 until 1962, and it was only in 1968 that Israel started to receive significant American kit. The reason for this was not that the US has witnessed the Six Day War, where well-armed Arabs using Soviet kit had nearly annihilated Israel, who were struggling to find a decent arms supplier. Up until 1968, Israel got its weapons primrily from Czechoslovakia and France.

Up until the Camp David agreement of 1979, it was the USSR who supplied Egypt with its military kit, not the US. In order to persuade Israel and Egypt to sign the peace agreement between them, the US offered each side an enormous bribe in the form of military assistance if the two sign up and keep the peace. This is how the US came to be supplying massive amounts of military aid to Israel and Egypt, it was not done in order to achieve a balance of power in the region, even if that has been the (rather welcome) effect.

Shortly after Nasser’s death, the Israelis came out with true enough quotes, showing how Sadat admired Nazi Germany. As Sadat drew closer to the West, there was a greater “understanding” as to what he “meant”. Germany at the time could be seen as an offset to the Britain and there’s enough wiggle room to express a limited (a stress on the limited)admiration at how Germany picked itself up after the devastation of WW I.

Interesting how major powers can have influence over regional rivals. Greece and Turkey in NATO, with Romania and Hungary having differences despite joint periods as Nazi and later Soviet allies.

Whether the maintenance of the regional balance of power by militarizing the region did more good than harm is, of course, a point we could debate ad infinitum…