Running half empty

Who would have thought Gazprom was in a bind? The Russian state-owned gas company should end the year with $36bn worth of net profit – or roughly the amount of the Kremlin’s loans this week to the troubled banking industry. It has little debt, at barely 0.7 times ebitda. And with Western Europe’s ever growing need for gas, the future looks bright, even if energy prices are declining. Yet Gazprom this week joined Russia’s three oil majors – Rosneft, Lukoil and TNK-BP – to ask the Kremlin for help...