Whither Russia's Oil?
About This Event

Second only to Saudi Arabia, Russia exported an estimated 7 million barrels of oil per day last year. Buoyed by the high prices and rapidly growing global demand, oil revenues have become the driving force of the Russian economy, while President Putin promised to place “energy security issues” at the center of the agenda of the upcoming July G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg.

Yet since the sharp change of economic policy by the Kremlin in 2003—which affected transportation, taxation, domestic energy consumption, investments, and ownership—Russia’s oil sector has experienced a number of disturbing trends, including nationalization of independent companies, lack of long-term investment, and inefficiency of state-owned enterprises. The rate of production growth plunged in 2005.

Can Russia remain a reliable and stable producer? What are the long-term structural challenges to Russia’s ability to meet the world’s growing demand for oil? How does the ideological shift in economic policy affect foreign investment? What are the implications for Russia’s relationship with Europe and the United States?

On May 19, AEI will bring together a distinguished group of leading scholars, policymakers, and industry experts from the United States, Russia, and Europe, to discuss these and other questions.

Agenda
9:45 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast
10:00
Welcome:
Leon Aron, AEI
10:05
Session I
Oil Rents and the Russian Economy
Speaker:
Clifford Gaddy, Brookings Institution
Russian Offshore: Prospects for Investment
Speaker:
Julia Nanay, PFC Energy
Russian Oil and the Future of EU-Russia Relations
Speaker:
Marco Fantini, Directorate General for Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission
12:25 p.m.
Luncheon
1:10
Session II
Economic Policy and Russia’s Oil Production
Speaker:
Vladimir Milov, Institute of Energy Policy (Moscow)
Russian Petro-state: Modernization or Stagnation?
Speaker:
Andrey Ryabov, Institute of World Economy and International Relations (Moscow)
Investing in Russian Energy: A Mutual Fund CEO’s Perspective
Speaker:
William Browder, Hermitage Fund
4:00
Adjournment
AEI Participants

 

Leon
Aron
  • Leon Aron is Resident Scholar and Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of three books and over 300 articles and essays. Since 1999, he has written Russian Outlook, a quarterly essay on economic, political, social and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition, published by the Institute. He is the author of the first full-scale scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and Russia’s Revolution: Essays 1989-2006 (AEI Press,2007); Roads to the Temple: Memory, Truth, Ideals and Ideas in the Making ofthe Russian Revolution, 1987-1991 (Yale University Press, Spring 2012).


    Dr. Aron earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, has taught a graduate seminar at Georgetown University, and was awarded the Peace Fellowship at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has co-edited and contributed the opening chapter to The Emergence of Russian Foreign Policy, published by the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1994 and contributed an opening chapter to The New Russian Foreign Policy (Council on Foreign Relations, 1998).


    Dr. Aron has contributed numerous essays and articles to newspapers andmagazines, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, theWall Street Journal Foreign Policy, The NewRepublic, Weekly Standard, Commentary, New York Times Book Review, the TimesLiterary Supplement. A frequent guest of television and radio talkshows, he has commented on Russian affairs for, among others, 60 Minutes,The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, CNN International,C-Span, and National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Talk of theNation.”


    From 1990 to 2004, he was a permanent discussant at the Voice of America’s radio and television show Gliadya iz Ameriki (“Looking from America”), which was broadcast to Russia every week.

  • Phone: 202-862-5898
    Email: laron@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Daniel Vajdic
    Phone: 202-862-5942
    Email: daniel.vajdic@aei.org
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