The above article, nice'n'juicy, is on their front page, for maximum impact.

But they also print the following, mre dismissive article, in their inside pages.

The hurdles for Moscow on path to `gas cartel'

Concerns that Russia is trying to form a natural gas cartel along the lines of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries may be misplaced, according to analysts and energy executives.

Despite the warning by Nato economists, it is far from certain that Moscow could persuade countries to join any such alliance. In many gas producing countries, the sector is far less-developed than their oil industries and needs greater input of foreign cash and expertise. Norway, Qatar, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Libya and even the much mooted Algeria would find it difficult to attract the huge sums of private-sector investment and know-how needed if the threat of future cutbacks under a cartel arrangement loomed.

If Russia managed to find participants, it would face considerable difficulty in creating a cartel along the lines of Opec because gas is traded very differently to oil. Gas is mainly priced on long-term contracts, often linked to the oil price. This makes manipulating prices by altering supply - in the way Opec does - far tougher.

Even for Moscow, playing such an adversarial game would be dangerous. Because domestic Russian prices are capped and Gazprom's customers are at present only in Europe, the Russian monopoly is at least as reliant on Europe as Europe is on Russia.

Nevertheless, there is a way Russia and major gas producers could - and are - substantially influencing future prices.

The energy industry is more worried about Russia's under-investment in the gas sector driving up prices than the possibility of a cartel doing so. If Moscow persuaded other countries to do the same, the problem would be compounded.

The International Energy Agency, the developed countries' energy watchdog, in a recent report, said: "Another source of uncertainty concerns the possibility of major gas exporting countries co-ordinating their investment and production plans in order to avoid surplus capacity and to keep gas prices up."

That article is a lot more reasonable, in that it makes a series of very real arguments:

• gas chains are a lot tougher to build, and still require the expertise and coordination provided by the Western oil majors. It's not just the massive cost, but the requirement to simultaneously push several projects in different countries that is beyond the capacity of most countries;

• linked to the above, gas contracts are a lot more rigid than oil contracts, and there is little flexibility for deviations, whether on price or volume. so market manipulation is indeed harder

• the corollary is that the dependency is mutual. focusing on one side (like the alarmist front page article) or the other (like this more dismissive article) misses the big picture.

The fact remains that we are becoming increasingly dependent of the investment decisions (whether to do or to let do) in a small number of countries - and that begs the question of working on our demand, which is a lot easier to control.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Strangely enough I had that one marked for comment as well ...

I'm beginning to build a scrap-book entitled "NATO - the New American auxilaries" to go with my other one entitled "US Diplomats - advocates for big US businesses".

NATO is a clear example of the dangers of leaving weapons lying around the house with no purpose.¡

The fact that this lies so far outside the purview of NATO makes me wonder whether this whole thing is "about" NATO at all, or whether NATO is being used as a respectable vehicle for "sexed-up" intelligence originating somewhere else entirely.

Clearly a reality-based analysis would look a lot more like the inside-page report you quote.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Time to reignite the Cold War! America is on our side in the desperate fight for the freedom of our ...gas... ...stoves...

What always confuses me is the fact military and their organisations, like NATO here, tend to voice statements that are political.
In our western democracy's, it are the political institutions who tell the military what to do or not.
When military or a military organisation start to define their own points of view without a dominant political backing or lead I find this frightening.
Where is the politician to make this clear?

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

It seems so obviously surprising NATO should produce such a report, that it's all the more surprising the FT doesn't address the question "why NATO?".

All they say is in that first sentence: the military alliance... needs to guard against....

In common parlance, that's scare talk.

Although there is disagreement over whether Russia could create any such cartel, the report highlights the deepening tensions between Western Europe and Moscow over energy security.

Deepening tensions we are constantly being warned about to the point where we may wonder if there isn't a deliberate effort to create them. This report may be no good, says the FT, but it serves to "highlight" what we're telling you.

Just when Poland blocks the EU on an agreement with Russia...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/14/8854/0167

Incorporating the comment above and some additional analysis.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

With more global warming reports, like the one out in this week's The New Yorker, and last week's report of the quadrupling of CO2 burden from 2000 to 2005, the price of burning carbon fuels will become prohibitive, despite their abundance. WE CAN'T MAKE MORE CO2! My suspicion is that the value of hydrocarbon commodities and their geostrategic value will decrease precisely because they are carbon dioxide producing resources.

Not to say there will be a complete devaluation, but the value will be less so, and cartels like the one proposed above will become relatively powerless, more like an agricultural trading bloc.

Share. Share resources, share delight, share burdens, share the healing. If we only could realize that sharing will bring us back from mass suicide.

Insofar as there is any truth to the proposition that Russia might be resurrecting a series of international alliances with a view towards resource control, one ongoing side effect of the continuing friction between Russia and the "West" might be to de-connect "real socialism" (ie, that practised in the Eastern Bloc prior to the 1990's) from the expansionary, imperialist tendancies Americans in particular ascribed to it.

Not so much socialism as natural Russian national interests at play here, after all, might the argument go.

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill

Well, any intelligence service is mostly analysts these days, and oh so many of them with PhD's in different subjects, including econ. But this one, or rather the fact that it was leaked with consequent publication on the front page of FT, forces me to think that this is an outcome of some inside struggle. People who desperately need Cold War II are using propaganda very well, I'm afraid...

Smarter? No, and it's not cheaper either.

Is there any possibility that St Louis City and County (two seperate entitiies, I'm afraid) can petition for EU membership?

We really do have more in common with you than the rest of our state

Kevin