Oil and Gas Head Up and East

By Howard Amos

The offices were those of Rosneft, the country’s largest oil company, and the small something was actually a somebody — Eduard Khudainatov, the company's jocular new president. He was outlining his vision for the company and his assessment of 2010 — the year in which oil extraction in Russia reached a post-Soviet record high — to a crowd of journalists and industry analysts.

Greens Fear Arctic Disaster

By Roland Oliphant

Burning oil near the site of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico would be even more of a disaster in the Arctic.

Russian environmentalists will appeal to BP and Rosneft shareholders to thwart the companies' plans to drill for oil in a remote part of the Arctic, amid concerns that a spill in the icebound sea could be unreachable for up to nine months.