Oil bullying: Love me, love my dog

Oil bullying is not a new phenomenon, and has been part and parcel of oil politics for a long time. In a globe clearly divided into camps of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ (in oil and gas perspective), the growing instances of latter being victimised by the former is quite natural. Earlier US, largely an oil-importing country, was the only original Big Bully doing anything it wished to do for its energy security. It used its oil-giants in bullying the suppliers, but those were the good old days. In the current scenario of growing global energy requirement and increasing price hike, there is resurgence of several oil bullies, notwithstanding US influence. Now the players have changed and so has their mission.

Presently, Russia, the largest exporter of gas and second largest exporter of crude oil, leads the pack. Under the Putinist rule, it made every effort to regain the super-power status, by making deliberate attempts to spread its tentacles all over the Europe and CIS. Europe’s thirst for gas made itself a very easy target. Even before Russia had started making inroads into Europe, it had tried to influence foreign-policies of several CIS partners. Russian refineries, which had subsidiaries in many of these countries, had stopped making supplies in guise of 'maintenance shut-down or commercial consideration', as and when a government of choice was not elected or a suitable bill was not passed in their parliaments. Ukraine, in 2005, suffered from its 'old ally'. Recently Russia stopped making oil supplies to another one time ally-Czech Republic- when the latter signed a missile treaty with US, it was merely a replay of the old game. Russia also tried to influence many countries to sell their natural gas companies to Gazprom, or face the consequence of ’No gas for you'.

The bad news for oil-importers' camp is that oil-bullying is a growing tribe, though sometimes in a very veiled manner, with many new and unruly players gaining prominence. Thanks to the growing demand of oil, some of these players even use their prominent clients (oil importers) to gain international recognition and thus continue the misrule, like Sudan and Myanmar did with help of China.

Certainly not good days ahead.

123: Staying Alive

Indian politicians never fail to give surprises, but the present U-turn by Samajwadi Party (SP) was cut above the rest, truly a masterpiece. A party which had made tormenting the ruling party, a part of its manifesto, was joining centre in the 'national interest'. This 'patriotic juice' had just started flowing in their veins, and thanks to this 'new found love' , the country may be saved from an early election.

Left did right by pulling out the support. After taking the central government on ransom for more than four years, it had already made full use of its 'support'. Left was poking nose into every economic policy in guise of 'interest of masses’. Had this 'right decision' been taken two years ago, it could have saved the Indian economy, especially the oil industry, from getting into this abyss. Elections or no elections then, by this time we could have seen the nuclear deal through (seeing the increasing energy need of India and rising oil prices) , assuming any party or alliance would see the real worth of this deal and not the politics alone.

The 123 agreement is a highly misunderstood document and I am pretty sure, none of these national leaders are supporting or opposing it for the merits or demerits of the deal. Left is opposing because the agreement finds its origin in a capitalist country, America (I wonder what would have been Left’s response, had Russia proposed this deal) . Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is opposing because its job is to oppose any thing that is tabled in the Parliament by the ruling alliance. Decisions of other smaller parties depend on their 'present' allegiance (and not ideological allgiance) to the two major national alliances-UPA and NDA.

The ruling party, on the other side, will be the real winner (after off-course, Indian civilian nuclear energy sector and many other companies who seem to benefit from this deal). If it sails through the deal, which seems more likely, it will take the credit of bringing India into the league of select nuclear countries, and rightly so. But unfortunately if it does not, then the ruling party will get into the election ring with a martyr's image, though making full use of this will depend a lot on their PR skills. In the entire story one disturbing factor that seems to mar the ideologies and national interests, is their (political parties') tendencies to cling to power, under any circumstance . Even the delayed courage shown by the Prime Minister looked like aggression of a dying snake. Sometimes, it does not work.

National Interest. Bullshit!