A cuddlier day

It seems that Russia does not always hold the whip hand in energy after all. Look at Shtokman. Last year, Moscow kicked foreign energy firms out of the bidding process to develop the giant gas field. But state-owned oil giant Gazprom couldn’t manage on its own. The field, dotted with icebergs in the Arctic sea, was simply too big, too risky, too technically challenging and too expensive. So now Gazprom has brought Total in as a partner. And it looks like the French firm has won better terms than...