The Misperception of the Russian-Ukrainian Gas Problem By Dr. Gary K. Busch, 12/1/09 The Soviet gas industry was set up in the Ukraine in the 1930s; and the infrastructure was built from there. The Ukraine is still a central part of the gas pipeline network even as the focus of activity for new gas fields has moved to Western Siberia. At the end of the Cold War, the division of the Soviet Union along Republic borders made for an often unworkable allocation of physical assets. Nowhere was this more true than for gas. The consequence is that vital assets for Gazprom (the massive Russian state gas company) are located in Ukraine and thus no longer under its direct control. (...) Right now the 50% of Gazprom formally owned by the Russian State is split between two public bodies controlled by different senior Kremlin insiders. These are the owners of the Gazprom share of the Swiss intermediary RosUkrEnergo which is charged with handling the oil and gas trade between the Russians and the Ukrainians. There is no transparency at all. It is no different on the Ukrainian side. It wasnâ€TMt pure chance Yulia Tymoschenko made her fortune in gas trading in the 1990s or that Yanukovich represents some of the largest gas-users from heavy-industry in Eastern Ukraine. (...) The oligarchs behind Gazprom realised that it could not get any money out of official deliveries to Ukraine. It "solved" that problem by privatising a portion of the gas trade to Ukraine - the portion going to customers able to pay for their gas. These customers used to pay the central Ukrainian gas company, Naftohaz Ukrainy, which did not pass on that money to Gazprom; what was put in place was a mechanism whereby these customers would pay less for their gas, but would pay directly another supplier, formally unrelated to either Ukrainian gas authorities or Gazprom. Of course, only gas coming from Russia could be delivered, and it still needed to use Ukraine's gas infrastructure, so the active cooperation of Gazprom and the Russian and Ukrainian siloviki was required to put that trade in place. In that type of system the real money generated did not need to go either to Kiev or to Moscow but could go to Switzerland. This is immensely profitable to both the Russian and Ukrainian siloviki. (...) In the Ukraine the political infighting mirrors the fight for access to this gas bounty. The political conflict between Tymoschenko, Yanukovych and Yuschenko mirrors the search for acceptance as the Ukrainian partner.
The Soviet gas industry was set up in the Ukraine in the 1930s; and the infrastructure was built from there. The Ukraine is still a central part of the gas pipeline network even as the focus of activity for new gas fields has moved to Western Siberia. At the end of the Cold War, the division of the Soviet Union along Republic borders made for an often unworkable allocation of physical assets. Nowhere was this more true than for gas. The consequence is that vital assets for Gazprom (the massive Russian state gas company) are located in Ukraine and thus no longer under its direct control.
(...)
Right now the 50% of Gazprom formally owned by the Russian State is split between two public bodies controlled by different senior Kremlin insiders. These are the owners of the Gazprom share of the Swiss intermediary RosUkrEnergo which is charged with handling the oil and gas trade between the Russians and the Ukrainians. There is no transparency at all.
It is no different on the Ukrainian side. It wasnâ€TMt pure chance Yulia Tymoschenko made her fortune in gas trading in the 1990s or that Yanukovich represents some of the largest gas-users from heavy-industry in Eastern Ukraine.
The oligarchs behind Gazprom realised that it could not get any money out of official deliveries to Ukraine. It "solved" that problem by privatising a portion of the gas trade to Ukraine - the portion going to customers able to pay for their gas. These customers used to pay the central Ukrainian gas company, Naftohaz Ukrainy, which did not pass on that money to Gazprom; what was put in place was a mechanism whereby these customers would pay less for their gas, but would pay directly another supplier, formally unrelated to either Ukrainian gas authorities or Gazprom.
Of course, only gas coming from Russia could be delivered, and it still needed to use Ukraine's gas infrastructure, so the active cooperation of Gazprom and the Russian and Ukrainian siloviki was required to put that trade in place. In that type of system the real money generated did not need to go either to Kiev or to Moscow but could go to Switzerland. This is immensely profitable to both the Russian and Ukrainian siloviki.
In the Ukraine the political infighting mirrors the fight for access to this gas bounty. The political conflict between Tymoschenko, Yanukovych and Yuschenko mirrors the search for acceptance as the Ukrainian partner.
Hmmm.... Where have we read this before? And funny, a good place to find info on Dr Busch is DailyKos.
Bleh. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
One should be happy that good ideas spread.
There can only be moral victory if such concepts break through media consciousness and one can claim - by time stamps - to have been the source.
And never ever go for 'pity points' ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
I would copy his page before sending him the e-mail.
I mean, if you pulled this kind of trick in a freshman term paper for a humanities class at UC Riverside you'd face charges of academic dishonesty and could be expelled from the university. I kid you not. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
Send him an invoice,Jerome.......or a nice request for a donation...... "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
* FAIR USE NOTICE. This site contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorised by the copyright owner. It is being made available without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance their understanding of international relations, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Editor: Dr. Gary K. Busch Email: gary@ocnus.net
Editor: Dr. Gary K. Busch
Email: gary@ocnus.net
From his About page (read carefully, I have bolded bits):
http://www.ocnus.net/Ocnusnews.htm
* FAIR USE NOTICE. This site contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorised by the copyright owner. It is being made available without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance their understanding of international relations, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
In plain English: I lift stuff from other people's work to constitute my articles, this is "fair use" under American law, if you want to quote my articles track down the copyright holders and get permission.
Objections are that he doesn't quote material, he lifts and slightly adapts it, and he doesn't attribute. He fits it seamlessly into an article (where does the rest come from, one wonders?) that he publishes under his byline.
Also that American law, dear friends, does not apply all over the planet. Busch and his "news org" are in London, our article was published in the European edition of the FT.
Still doesn't mean we can easily do anything about it. We can write to ask him to take it down ("cease and desist" is an American term as is "fair use", just shows how colonised we are) or provide satisfactory attribution. Not much more.
Irrational Economic Man
Irrational Economic Man By Michael Shermer, City Journal 11/1/09 Jan 12, 2009 - 9:51:18 AM
Russia Wins Round 2 of Gas Fight By Vladimir Frolov, Moscow Times 13/1/09 Jan 13, 2009 - 11:28:08 AM
Urgent Review of Zim Diamonds By Waldimar Pelser, News 24 11/1/09 Jan 12, 2009 - 10:12:56 AM
Chinese Inroads in DR Congo By Wenran Jiang, China Brief 12/1/09 Jan 13, 2009 - 11:13:19 AM
In addition, he does attribute other content even with the warning that others should contact the authors for permission to reuse the materials he quotes.
In the editorial in question he's not showcasing nor attributing. He's appropriating Jerome's work.
It so happens that this was an Op-Ed in the FT... It wasn't in the print edition in the UK and US, but it was in the online edition.
I agree with everyone who said this is too expensive to bother litigating over, so I think it is imperative that a very well crafted "cease and desist" (pace afew) letter be drafted. I am not a lawyer and I don't dare write that letter. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
But both Common Dreams and this dude's newsletter, while scavenging, fully attribute the articles they reprint. The editorial in question is a thinly disguised plagiarism of Jerome's text. The sophistication of the paraphrase is sophomoric. Like I said in another comment, a 1st year student in, say, History at, say, UCR would be failed for submitting that as a class essay, as well as referred for academic dishonesty and quite likely disciplined by the campus administration.
As for "it's okay to copy from blogs", this here blog takes a scrupulous and stringent approach to source attribution and we would like to see our material accorded the same respect we accord others'. Hey, I explicitly licence my own contributions under a Creative Commons license, but I require attribution. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
Far better that pissing the guy off with a quasi legal threatening letter which he knows you can't follow up on, I would suggest a "nice" letter noting that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but requesting attribution and links back. notes from no w here
Nigeria Village Square
RussiaProfile
Raising a stink about him is probably the best arm we have.
The EIA attributes to the Oil and Gas Journal, and Busch just copies that attribution in:
Busch:
The Misperception of the Russian-Ukrainian Gas Problem
According to the Oil and Gas Journal, Ukraine has roughly 40 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas reserves, from which roughly 0.68 Tcf was produced in 2005. In 2006, Ukraine produced 0.67 Tcf and consumed 3.1 Tcf of natural gas, making it the former Soviet Union's largest natural gas net importer (2.4 Tcf, or 78 percent of consumption). Ukraine is the sixth-largest consumer of gas in the world and consumes more gas than Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia combined. Since the early 1990s, Ukraineâ€TMs usage of natural gas as a share of its total energy consumption has increased by 10 percent to comprise over half of Ukraineâ€TMs energy usage.
...etc...
EIA:
Ukraine Energy Data, Statistics and Analysis - Oil, Gas, Electricity, Coal
According to the Oil and Gas Journal Ukraine has roughly 40 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas reserves, from which roughly 0.68 Tcf was produced in 2005. In 2006, Ukraine produced 0.67 Tcf and consumed 3.1 Tcf of natural gas, making it the former Soviet Union's largest natural gas net importer (2.4 Tcf, or 78 percent of consumption, see Fig. 2). Ukraine is the sixth-largest consumer of gas in the world and consumes more gas than Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia combined. Since the early 1990s, Ukraine's usage of natural gas as a share of its total energy consumption has increased by 10 percent to comprise over half of Ukraine's energy usage
A piece of work indeed... The "editorial" is nearly all copy-paste with a few words changed.
Copyscape
Otherwise I'll do it. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
Oh, wait!
Can you compare his piece with the FT text? Maybe Jerome could ask the FT to get involved... After all, he's plagiarizing them... Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
And the comparison is even harder.
OCNUS.NET News Before It�s News The purpose of this newsletter is to share with interested people some of the information which passes through our hands daily. There is no overt ideological position being advocated; only that the information piques our interest. The selections are purely arbitrary and usually reflect the areas of research in which we are engaged. Most of the quoted material is unedited. There will be several pieces in languages other than English for which we shall not provide translation. A series of sites where reference articles can be found will be included We have reduced graphics to a minimum to ease loading time. * FAIR USE NOTICE. This site contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorised by the copyright owner. It is being made available without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance their understanding of international relations, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Editor: Dr. Gary K. Busch Email: gary@ocnus.net
OCNUS.NET
News Before It�s News
The purpose of this newsletter is to share with interested people some of the information which passes through our hands daily. There is no overt ideological position being advocated; only that the information piques our interest. The selections are purely arbitrary and usually reflect the areas of research in which we are engaged. Most of the quoted material is unedited.
There will be several pieces in languages other than English for which we shall not provide translation. A series of sites where reference articles can be found will be included We have reduced graphics to a minimum to ease loading time.
Dr. Gary K. Busch Director and Senior Associate Gary Busch joins Scribe Strategies & Advisors (UK) as Director and Senior Associate with a wealth of experience behind him: an international trades unionist, an academic, a businessman and a political affairs and business consultant for 40 years. The breadth of his multi-faceted career and his expertise are a major asset to Scribe's London office. Gary Busch has been Chairman and CEO of International Bulk Trade, Transport Logistics, Transport Africa and the North Pacific Lines. These companies have owned, chartered and operated marine dry cargo vessels and cargo aircraft worldwide. He set up the transport and logistics systems for the Russian aluminium industry and operated transport and port facilities within Russia and for Russian exports. His airline companies were the national cargo airlines of two African countries. He was a Professor and Head of Department at the University of Hawaii and has been a visiting professor at several universities. He was the head of research in international affairs for a major U.S. trade union and Assistant General Secretary of an international union body. He has been a consultant on international political developments for several major international corporations, think-tanks and private intelligence companies, with a speciality in African politics. He speaks and reads 12 languages and has written six books and published 58 specialist studies. His articles have appeared in the Economist Intelligence Unit, Wall Street Journal, WPROST (a leading Polish weekly news magazine), Pravda and several other major international news journals. He was the host and executive producer of three 39-week series on Public Broadcasting and has been a frequent contributor to television documentary series. He is the editor and publisher of the web-based news journal of international relations www.ocnus.net and the distance-learning educational website www.worldtrade.ac.
But they sure know how to write formal text that sounds like a pseudolegal argument that this is okay under copyright law. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
Diary (not especially about Busch):
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/19/132525/239
Comments specifically about Busch:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2005/2/19/132525/239/21
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2005/2/19/132525/239/4
Comment 21 and its subthread are the right ones.
Inconclusive, but interesting...
Fair dealing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the United Kingdom, the application of "fair dealing" has always been the subject of dispute because statute law has not defined the exact number of copies and the amount of the original materials allowed.... The CDPA permits individuals to make a single copy of a "reasonable proportion" of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works for "research and private study" and "criticism, review and news reporting" ( s. 29, 30) under the terms of "fair dealing". The extent of "reasonable proportion" is not defined in the act.
The CDPA permits individuals to make a single copy of a "reasonable proportion" of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works for "research and private study" and "criticism, review and news reporting" ( s. 29, 30) under the terms of "fair dealing". The extent of "reasonable proportion" is not defined in the act.
I think ET or Jerome at least deserves an acknowledgement. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Making notice of what he's done on other sites focusing on this issue would also be a priority. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
