This gets annoying. In one post you write:
In another:
Then we look here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...ops-Syria.html
And what do we see:
If you're going to cut and paste from public sources, please cite them.Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria.
This stuff is not new, and it's in no way secret. This article was from August 2013, pre-Ukraine, almost a year ago. The "deal" was anything but "secret": it was immediately and widely reported and saw a lot of discussion back in the day. The deal never went through: the Russians did not back away from Assad, the Saudis never went through with the arms buy that was going to be part of the deal. It's old news and non-news.
Even if the deal had gone through, despite the rather hysterical headline the parties involved were never going to "control the global oil market". Much of what the Saudis "offered" was not in their power to assure. The article you quoted but didn't cite makes that clear:
The claim that control over Eastern Med gas was offered is also specious: the Saudis allegedly offered not to compete with the Russians in that area, but there is absolutely nothing the Saudis could do to prevent American, European, or Chinese companies from getting involved.Mr Skrebowski said it is unclear what the Saudis can really offer the Russians on gas, beyond using leverage over Qatar and others to cut output of liquefied natural gas (LNG). “The Qataris are not going to obey Saudi orders,” he said.
This is a better article covering the same issues:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9760OQ20130807
In short, you've pasted material directly from an old article, without a citation. You've misrepresented it as new, and distorted the contents to support a contention of threat. That to me is an insult to the forum and everyone on it, and I personally hope it isn't repeated.
What actually is fairly recent news is that the Russians have signed a long term deal to supply gas to China, starting with 38 billion BCM/year four years down the line and eventually rising to 130 BCM/year. That of course was predictable: Putin is concerned about future sanctions and about Europe finally looking for other sources. I'm sure he'd rather start the deal sooner, but it will take years to build the pipeline infrastructure. That's not a huge issue of course, because it will also take years for the Europeans to reroute their infrastructure away from Russian gas. These things don't happen overnight.
Before anyone cites this as an example of a budding Sino-Russian alliance, note the prices to be paid. Brother Han knew Putin needed another market, put the screws on, and got himself an exceptional deal, closer to North American prices than Asian prices on gas that doesn't have to pass the straits of Hormuz and/or Malacca.
Given that, it's pretty clear that the Russians are not putting any great faith in a long-failed deal to protect their dominance of the European gas market.
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