Europe knows all about how tough Gazprom can be at the negotiating table. Now Gazprom, the bare-knuckled king of natural gas, is out to make its mark in America.

Just how tough is Gazprom? As the world's biggest supplier of natural gas, the Russian company has a reputation for hard-nosed bargaining. So when John Hattenberger, chief of the company's new US operation, hired George Thorogood and The Destroyers to play at a party marking the opening of Gazprom's Houston office, he insisted Thorogood leave his Epiphone guitar after the show. "That was clause 19 of the contract," Hattenberger jokes. Today the autographed instrument hangs above Gazprom's trading floor.

That's Gazprom with a sense of humor. But more often, its negotiating style is no laughing matter. In January, Gazprom slowed gas deliveries to Ukraine in a price dispute, leaving customers further down the pipeline in Central Europe shivering in the winter cold-the third time in three years Gazprom has taken similar steps.

(I don't recall shivering in winter cold last winter, not to mention three winters in a row.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}