The ‘Russification’ of Oil Exploration - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/business/energy-environment/russia-oil-exploration-sanctions.html?_r=0
MOSCOW — The American and European sanctions against the Russian oil industry have dashed, at least for now, the Western oil majors’ ambitions to drill in the Arctic Ocean.
But drilling will continue all the same, Russian government and state oil company officials have been taking pains to point out, ever since the sanctions took effect over the summer.
“We will do it on our own,” Igor I. Sechin, the president of Russia’s state-controlled oil company, Rosneft, told journalists in October. “We’ll continue drilling here next year and the years after that.”
Rather than throw in the towel in the face of Western sanctions intended to halt Russia’s Arctic oil ambitions by stopping technology transfers, the Russians have responded with plans to “Russify” the technology to be deployed in the world’s largest effort to date to extract oil from the thawing Arctic Ocean.
