if you want to invest in Russia, you need to call to Gazprom

To the right Alexei Miller, CEO of Gazprom, and to the left  Gerhard Schroeder former German chancellor who now works for Gazprom.

This is one of the few interviews offered by Alexei Miller, the president of the opaque company Gazprom, the king of planet gas reserves. This interview for Financial times, was neither personal nor telephone, was via email.

Aleixei Miller responds about the controversy of the Russian branch of British Petroleum, TNK-BP, “Gazprom has nothing to do with them”.

About his recent forecast that petroleum will reach the $250, it declares, “the oil price that I predicted is not surprising. The global energy consumption has been growing at a breakneck pace and looks almost price-insensitive. The last 10 years (1997-2007) saw the Chinese energy consumption almost double and the Indian one grow over 1.5-fold. It can be contributed not only to their industrial growth, but to a principal shift in the lifestyles of their populations. Asia has replaced bikes with scooters. What about the next step to cars? The emerging economies are striving for energy resources to secure their growth and the developed ones are at least interested in the preservation of the status quo. All this happens against the background of the changes in the global economic setup and serious geopolitical changes. Oil price hikes are linked to a major revision of long-term forecasts. They demonstrate global energy supply-demand imbalance in the coming decades. Due to growing financial transactions on the markets of raw materials we are already facing today the prices of tomorrow. The two factors jointly trigger a “great price leap” on the crude oil market.”

Alexei Miller said: OPEC has no control over oil price.

“In general it seems that even OPEC doesn’t have any real influence on the global oil market nowadays. Not a single decision has been passed of late that would really influence the global oil market. Many major oil-producing countries have approached their peak extraction capacities and are limited in their ability to vary the production volumes.”

World natural gas proven reserves in 2.007
And the most important answer, read this one:

“As far as Russian investment attractiveness is concerned, not only we, but also most observers view our country as a most attractive market. However, one rule has to be taken into account to ensure successful investments in the energy sphere – it is better to invest jointly with the state. For example, into Gazprom stock.”

Miller said recently  that in the coming years Gazprom would become “the most influential in the energy business”.