The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has joined the chorus of those touting Russia as America's new energy savior. This ought to be seen for what it is: a PR move designed to blow smoke up the world's ass. On top of the problems asociated with Russian petroleum exporting mentioned in the Dec.3rd clusterfuck chronicle (location of fields, difficulty of running pipelines across contested lands, etc.) there are two additional obstacles to Russia ever developing into a replacement for OPEC. These relate to the business end of developing the Russian oil infrastucture, and they are as follows: Russia has not developed a meaningful body of property law, meaning that contracts cannot be enforced; and Russia has not developed coherent banking institutions, meaning that financial transactions cannoit be depended on. Russia is not going to rescue us from the problems we have developed around the larger issue of our addiction to cheap oil.