Power Shortages Hit LUKoil Output

[phantom power]

The company's crude production in western Siberia was 5.5 percent lower in the first quarter, at 14.3 million tons (1.2 million barrels per day), compared with a year earlier, according to a statement on its web site. LUKoil pumps about 62 percent of its oil in western Siberia.

"A significant impact on our production in the period was caused by a lack of sufficient power generating capacities to meet the growing demand," it said. Producers "face the need to scale up pumping operations supporting crude oil production operations."

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1009/42/368028.htm

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Prediction:

Contrived.

[phantom power]

2. Post:

Cryptic.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. Ok. More verbose version:

It is becoming somewhat apparent that market manipulations are taking place around the world. So apparent that the Commodities Futures Trading Commission has been investigating for the last 6 months. What better place for market manipulations than at the wellhead in Siberia? It's not as if the CCFC can dispatch investigators there. Also, it is hard to NOT expect that if manipulations are taking place, some of them would be taking place in Wild n' Wooly Russia, which has gotten so wild n' wooly, it is hard to imagine that Ayn Rand would not emigrate back, were that nasty piece of work still alive. The place has turned into her kind of paradise, at the upper economic end.

Addendum: I wonder where those guys in Nigeria are getting the money to fund their insurgency? It's not as if there is a Politburo or KGB left around funding such things. But there are hedge funds, and they have more play money.

[phantom power]

4. My prediction is the CCFC won't succeed in reducing the price much.

Because there isn't as much market manipulation happening as they would like to think.