While most Russian oil tycoons and Kremlin energy officials are calculating billions of losses that could result from Western sanctions, one of them is counting his blessings.
Vladimir Bogdanov’s Surgutneftegas has no Western debts, no foreign partners on its huge Siberian fields and uses no Western drilling technology, making it virtually immune to sanctions imposed on Russia to try and persuade it to change course over Ukraine.
Bogdanov, 63, has been running Russia’s third largest oil producer since 1984 and has been repeatedly described as a ‘dinosaur’ by his rivals, who embraced Western technology, loans and accounting rules.
But in today’s Russia it …read more
Source: Voice of America
