{"id":4184,"date":"2017-02-19T18:22:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T02:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=4184"},"modified":"2017-02-19T18:39:41","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T02:39:41","slug":"analysis-new-us-state-chief-perfect-fit-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/19\/analysis-new-us-state-chief-perfect-fit-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Analysis: New US state chief a perfect fit for Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"<header id=\"header-story\" class=\"clearfix da-all da-pad ta-all ta-pad\">\n<hgroup>\n<h2 class=\"heading-story\">Friendship between Putin and Rex Tillerson dates back to 1990s when the Texas oilman established a US energy presence.<\/h2>\n<\/hgroup>\n<div>\n<p class=\"meta\"><span class=\"oryx-heading-profile\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/profile\/mansur-mirovalev-.html\" rel=\"author\">Mansur Mirovalev<\/a>\u00a0(aljazeera.com)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div id=\"vdoContainer\" class=\"video-container\">\n<div>\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/players.brightcove.net\/665003303001\/4k5gFJHRe_default\/index.html?videoId=5243233224001\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\" class=\"article-body\">\n<p><strong>Moscow, Russia &#8211;<\/strong> The appointment of Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil&#8217;s chief executive, as the new US secretary of state was a shock to many &#8211; mostly because of his lifelong employment at one of the world&#8217;s largest oil companies and friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n<p>The friendship between the former KGB spy and the Texan oilman &#8211; they&#8217;re both 64 now \u2013 dates back to the late 1990s when Tillerson established the biggest presence of a US oil company in Russia, and Putin was a fledgling politician who had just been appointed prime minister in ailing president Boris Yeltsin&#8217;s government.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013, Putin handed Tillerson a pentacle-shaped Friendship Medal, one of Russia&#8217;s highest award for foreigners, for &#8220;special merits in development of bilateral ties with Russia&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ReadMoreContentSeparator\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/12\/trump-nominate-exxon-chief-secretary-state-161213112341375.html\" target=\"_self\">Donald Trump names Rex Tillerson as secretary of state<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A year earlier, Tillerson presided over a multibillion dollar deal that was designed to help Moscow tap into the immense oil Bonanza in the Arctic &#8211; but fell through because of Western sanctions imposed after Crimea&#8217;s 2014 annexation. Tillerson lambasted the sanctions that cost his company billions of dollars in lost profit.<\/p>\n<p>And now, when Tillerson is a fledgling diplomat and Putin is a seasoned, iron-fisted politician, Kremlin critics wonder whether these amicable ties will mark a U-turn in Washington&#8217;s dealings with Moscow.<\/p>\n<div data-embed-type=\"Brightcove\" data-embed-id=\"5247206295001\">\n<table class=\"in-article-item video\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"mceVideoBox\">\n<div id=\"bcvid_5247206295001\">\n<div>\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/players.brightcove.net\/665003303001\/4k5gFJHRe_default\/index.html?videoId=5247206295001\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"meta\">Trump reveals new controversial cabinet nominees<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>&#8220;This appointment is very beneficial for Putin,&#8221; Vladimir Milov, Russia&#8217;s former deputy energy minister now in opposition to the Kremlin, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>Tillerson will create &#8220;an environment that is much more comfortable for Putin that the previous architecture of transatlantic cooperation, a certain unified West with its own certain values&#8221;, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Russia&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/08\/russia-deploys-advanced-air-defence-system-crimea-160813073345332.html\" target=\"_self\">annexation of Crimea<\/a>, support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, and the pro-Damascus operation in Syria has brought ties with the West back to Cold-War lows.<\/p>\n<p>But the jingoistic, neo-conservative, and pragmatic course chosen by president-elect Donald Trump starkly contradicts years of Washington&#8217;s policies towards containing Russia &#8211; and strangely fits the Kremlin&#8217;s own political agenda.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>No more lectures on democracy?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>For most of his rule, Putin wanted the West to treat Moscow as an equal and detested reprimands for his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/opinion\/2016\/11\/surveillance-russia-161107133103258.html\" target=\"_self\">crackdown on opposition figures<\/a>, corruption, and concentration of key industries around state-run corporations.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts insist Trump&#8217;s approach will be much more businesslike.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Russia&#8217;s leadership proclaimed pragmatism as the basis of its foreign policy a long time ago. If the US will share the same foreign policy principle, I don&#8217;t think there will be any problems,&#8221; Alexey Mukhin, head of the Moscow-based Centre for Political Information think-tank, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>Pro-Kremlin pundits are already ecstatic about the appointment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a positive development so unexpected that we still don&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s happening,&#8221; Kremlin adviser and political analyst Sergei Markov told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Profiting on Russia<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In 1998-1999, Tillerson served as vice president of Exxon (before the company&#8217;s merger with Mobil) in charge of operations in the Caspian Sea and on Sakhalin, Russia&#8217;s largest Pacific island north of Japan.<\/p>\n<p>Dealings with Russian authorities weren&#8217;t always easy. In April 2015, <a href=\"http:\/\/economictimes.indiatimes.com\/articleshow\/47611368.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&amp;utm_medium=text&amp;utm_campaign=cppst\" target=\"_blank\">the company sued Russia<\/a> at the Stockholm arbitrage court claiming it overpaid profit tax on the Sakhalin project.<\/p>\n<p>But Tillerson soon found himself among Moscow&#8217;s most trusted Big Oil executives.<\/p>\n<p>In September 2005, Putin met Tillerson &#8211; ExxonMobil&#8217;s president at the time &#8211; as well as with the company&#8217;s then-chief executive Lee Raymond, and top managers of Conoco-Phillips and Shevron-Texaco.<\/p>\n<p>Months earlier, oil tycoon <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/programmes\/countingthecost\/2014\/10\/russia-nearing-an-economic-crisis-2014101981349733363.html\" target=\"_self\">Mikhail Khodorkovsky<\/a>was sentenced to nine years in jail for alleged fraud in what was widely seen as the Kremlin&#8217;s revenge for his financial support of the opposition. International investors were worried about the imprisonment, and the meeting was an attempt to reassure them that Moscow was still a reliable partner.<\/p>\n<div data-embed-type=\"Brightcove\" data-embed-id=\"5241226587001\">\n<table class=\"in-article-item video\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"mceVideoBox\">\n<div id=\"bcvid_5241226587001\">\n<div>\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/players.brightcove.net\/665003303001\/4k5gFJHRe_default\/index.html?videoId=5241226587001\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"meta\">Trump taps climate change denier to lead EPA<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Most of Khodorkovsky&#8217;s oil company, Yukos, soon became the bulk of state-run Rosneft, ExxonMobil&#8217;s main Russian partner and its nation&#8217;s largest oil company. Igor Sechin, a former Portuguese translator and Putin&#8217;s key ally often described as the second-most powerful man in Russia, heads Rosneft now.<\/p>\n<p>He is also a good friend of Tillerson, according to Russian and western media reports.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Arctic oil dream<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In 2011, ExxonMobil outmaneuvered oil giant BP to help Russia develop the world&#8217;s largest treasure chest of untapped hydrocarbons.<\/p>\n<p>The Arctic Circle holds some 90 billion barrels of yet undiscovered but technically recoverable oil, about one-seventh of the world&#8217;s undiscovered oil reserves &#8211; as well as billions of cubic metres of natural gas, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usgs.gov\/newsroom\/article.asp?ID=1980#.VP4RaKPLfJg\" target=\"_blank\">a 2008 assessment<\/a> by the US Geological Survey.<\/p>\n<p>Russia&#8217;s share of the reserves is at least 41 percent of oil and 70 percent of gas, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ssb.no\/a\/publikasjoner\/pdf\/DP\/dp645.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">according<\/a>to Norwegian officials. But Moscow lacked the deep-drilling technologies and equipment &#8211; and that&#8217;s where ExxonMobil stepped in.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, Putin oversaw the signing of a &#8220;strategic&#8221; deal between Rosneft and ExxonMobil to develop three oil-and-gas fields in Russia&#8217;s Arctic &#8211; in exchange for shares in six ExxonMobil projects in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d like to emphasise the exclusiveness of these decisions for Russian companies &#8230; that until today were not able to develop existing deposits in the US,&#8221; Sechin told the Interfax news agency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ReadMoreContentSeparator\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/11\/high-ranking-russian-minister-arrested-2m-bribe-161115114508943.html\" target=\"_self\">Russia: Alexei Ulyukayev arrested over $2m bribe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tillerson attended the ceremony and said in a statement that the deal &#8220;takes our relationship to a new level and will create substantial value for both companies&#8221;. ExxonMobil said it would spend $3.2bn to explore the fields that would give it access to tens of billions of barrels of oil.<\/p>\n<p>The drilling began in 2014 but the deal &#8211; along with another joint development in western Siberia &#8211; was frozen because of sanctions over Crimea, and ExxonMobil <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gasandoil.com\/news\/2015\/02\/exxon-mobil-loses-1-billion-due-to-sanctions-against-russia\" target=\"_blank\">reportedly<\/a> lost $1bn.<\/p>\n<p>Sechin and Rosneft were blacklisted as part of the sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Tillerson told ExxonMobil&#8217;s shareholders &#8220;we always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The sanctions did not stop him from visiting Russia at least twice to meet the energy minister and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-russia-exxon-tillerson-idUSKCN0Z01H6\" target=\"_blank\">attend an economic forum<\/a> in St Petersburg, Putin&#8217;s hometown.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Bright future?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>So, the big question now is whether Tillerson will be instrumental in the lifting of sanctions, which will undoubtedly benefit ExxonMobil&#8217;s current and future operations in Russia.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He and Donald Trump will initiate the lifting of sanctions with a probability of 70-80 percent,&#8221; analyst Mukhin predicted.<\/p>\n<p>Trump doubts President Barack Obama&#8217;s claims that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/12\/trump-pushes-russia-hacking-investigation-161210171247837.html\" target=\"_self\">Russia meddled in the November presidential vote<\/a> through hackers and propaganda, and spoke in favour of lifting the sanctions and respecting Russia&#8217;s interests.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With him, a certain &#8216;reset&#8217; is possible,&#8221; Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think-tank, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>His boss at Carnegie, Dmitri Trenin, said in a tweet that Tillerson&#8217;s tenure as the fourth-most powerful man in the US would signify &#8220;the greatest discontinuity in US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War&#8221;.<\/p>\n<div data-embed-type=\"Brightcove\" data-embed-id=\"5243982181001\">\n<table class=\"in-article-item video Fullwidth\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"mceVideoBox\">\n<div id=\"bcvid_5243982181001\">\n<div>\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/players.brightcove.net\/665003303001\/4k5gFJHRe_default\/index.html?videoId=5243982181001\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"meta\">How Trump may change US foreign policy<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Source:\u00a0Al Jazeera News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friendship between Putin and Rex Tillerson dates back to 1990s when the Texas oilman established a US energy presence. Mansur Mirovalev\u00a0(aljazeera.com) Moscow, Russia &#8211; The appointment of Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil&#8217;s chief executive, as the new US secretary of state was a shock to many &#8211; mostly because of his lifelong&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/19\/analysis-new-us-state-chief-perfect-fit-russia\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4184"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4184"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4192,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4184\/revisions\/4192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}