Let’s Get “Catty” about 2010 and Greet New Year with a Roar!

   Brandy and Patches are excited! Who? My two golden tabby Moscow-street cats! I just told them that 2010 is the “Year of the Tiger” according to the Chinese New Year. And already in November, gift shops in Moscow are selling New Year gift items with a cat theme.

   So, Bran (the right photo) and Patch (who is bilingual and bears the Russian name “Khvostik” (Little Tail)) inspired me to ask readers of this column to email pictures of their favorite felines. Please send a high resolution jpg of your cat to tiger@eurasiapress.com and include in your e-mail your cat’s name, your name, your company, your title and the name of your hometown.

   Even better, if you have a photo of a cat on the hunt at any oil facility, send it – just make sure we can clearly see the cat’s face! We’ll print as many pictures as we can fit into a special Chinese New Year photo page in our Drilling Issue in February. Why February? Because the Chinese New Year doesn’t begin in 2010 until February 14 (note: the date changes each year.) And besides, Russian oil companies do buy a lot of Chinese-made drilling equipment.

   Bran and Patch (aka “Khvostik”) will select the three pictures they like best and award those lucky cat owners free 12-month subscriptions to Oil&Gas Eurasia. We will print the three winning pics separately in this column in February, and on www.oilandgaseurasia.com, and we’ll explain why our panel of judges (Bran and Patch, of course) selected them.

   One more note before I get down to more serious matters: If you surf the net you’ll learn that the animal symbols of the Chinese New Year cycle every 12 years. So the last “Year of the Tiger” was in 1998 (not a year we like to talk about in Russia). But the good news is that the animal mythology is tempered with the five Chinese elements of metal, water, wood, fire and earth. 2010 is a “metal” year and the last time we had a “Metal Tiger” was in 1950!

   So here’s a little bit I gleaned from the Chinese horoscope page on www.usbridal.com (don’t ask “why this (?) site,” it simply came up on Google!): “The Metal element gives the Tiger its sharpness in action and speed of thought. Tigers born in the Metal year like to stand out in a crowd. With an inspiring assertiveness and competitive demeanor, they determine their goals and then do anything necessary to achieve them. This good-looking character sometimes suffers from mood swings and temper tantrums. The Tiger can be known to jump to conclusions or to act too quickly without weighing the options or understanding the consequences. This is a flaw Tigers must learn to curb.”

   Enough said. Now for a look at our November issue! And for those “assertive” and “competitive” tigers out there I’d like to draw attention to Alexei Chesnokov’s article on how the oilfield services market seems poised to bounce back in 2010. The most conservative market forecasters don’t see a return to 2008 activity levels until 2014. But next year already we’re in for a definite upturn. Among other things we’re hearing that the lack of investment in 2009 has lead to the depletion of equipment inventories and next year those inventories will need to be replenished. Contracts anyone? But I’ll let the experts from Paker, TMS Group, Halliburton, Discovery Drilling, Tesco, Surgutneftegaz, Mirrico, PromTekhInvest and others, tell their own stories.

   You’ll be noticing in this, and coming issues of Oil&Gas Eurasia, an increased emphasis on downstream topics and pipelines. To this end, our correspondent Elena Zhuk traveled recently with Gazpromneft to Serbia where she visited with officials from Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), Serbia's largest oil and gas company in which Gazpromneft earlier this year announced its purchase of a 51 percent stake.

   Gazpromneft is investing €548 million in NIS of which €467 million will go into upgrading the Pancevo and Novi Sad refineries. The remainder will fund environment-related projects. The investment commitment is a bargain when compared to what Gazpromneft gets – access to consumers of high quality automobile fuel in southeast Europe and a guaranteed consumer of Russian crude feedstock. But Gazprom itself offered the Serbian government a deal it couldn’t refuse – guarantees of 10 bcm annually of natural gas and two construction projects: a section of the South Stream pipeline and a major gas storage facility. No wonder NIS’ other would-be “suitors” Shell, OMV, MOL, PKN Orlen, Hellenic Petroleum and LUKOIL lost out.

   Finally, I’d like to mention our observance of an important anniversary – Valery Graifer, board chairman at at LUKOIL and general director of RITEK, celebrates his 80th birthday in November. In this month’s issue, Oil&Gas Eurasia offers a retrospective on Professor Graifer’s long and distinguished career.

   So happy reading! Meanwhile, it seems I’ve gotten into a little trouble here at my office. I knew this “Year of the Tiger” promotion was going to be popular but I didn’t know how popular. It seems that in the last hour, four of my colleagues have gotten wind of the fact that Brandy and Patches are in the chair as judges. And it seems that Cliff, Sima, Kuzya and Mexx are now offended. Why? Because their owners (respectively, copy editor Olga Hilal, office manager Olga Boldyreva, subscription sales manager Elena Luneva, and chief designer Pyotr Degtyarev) told my little secret and have already entered their pictures ahead of the rush! So act now and email me at tiger@eurasiapress.com.

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