The Battle for Russian Oil

At the time of the Soviet Union's disintegration, oil was contested by the Moscow and Russian regions as the main commodity generating considerable rents under volatile economic conditions. The initial arrangements of the early 1990s between the federal executive and regional administrations with regard to the oil sector played a major role in establishing an institutional framework for the business activities of federal oil companies throughout the Russian Federation. The result of
these arrangements was the increased authority of regional elites over the oil industry's infrastructure, natural resources, petroleum sales, oil exports and taxation.
This book examines the main problems that federal oil companies faced in their formative years and their subsequent strategies aimed at undermining regional control over key aspects of national oil production. The book argues that during the period of 1998-2004, federal corporate groups successfully undermined the hold of regional authorities on the national oil sector. As a result the federal centre, with the help of large petroleum corporations, managed to reintegrate the semi-confederal
Russian Federation economically and politically. This set the stage for the present situation of further centralisation of state control over the Russian national oil sector and the emergence of Russia as a hydrocarbon power.