2008年湘潭大学考博英语真题(翻译)

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For over a decade Royal Dutch Shell, along with its Japanese partners, Mitsui arid Mitsubishi. Has been struggling to coax oil and gas out of the frozen seas off Sakhalin Island, in Russian’s far cast. Over the years the scheme has run into environmental protests, its projected cost has doubled to $20 billion and its completion date has receded. But it is now nearly finished. With oil and gas prices high and a flood of revenue imminent it is an odd time for the three owners to reduce their shareholding. Yet that is exactly what they offered to do this week, by selling a majority stake in the project to Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas giant.

Gazprom’s masters in the Kremlin have made no bones of their desire to keep big energy projects in the family, so to speak. Russian officials had been making life difficult for the Sakhalin project by threatening dire consequences for minor environmental lapses. The shareholders, perhaps mindful of the fate of Yukos, a big Russian oil firm bankrupted by over-zealous tax inspectors, presumably concluded that Gazprom was making them, an offer they could not refuse.

When it comes to energy, Vladimir Putin’s Russia seems prone to loutish behavior-despite constant claims that Russia is a reliable partner. In addition to mugging Yukos, it has often intimidated its neighbors with threats to cut off their oil or gas supplies. Earlier this year, when Lithuania (立陶宛)had the temerity to sell an oil refinery to a Polish firm instead of Russian one, the pipeline that supplies the refinery with Russian oil suddenly succumbed to a mysterious technical fault. Last winter Gazprom appeared to blackmail Ukraine’s new pro-Western government by cutting off the country's gas amid a dispute over prices. The episode sent a chill throughout Europe, which relies on Gazprom for about a quarter of its gas. Japan, the fixture recipient of most of the gas from Sakhalin, will now also find itself at Gazprom's mercy.

Russia’s government, of course, is not the only to try to grab a bigger share of the takings as oil and gas prices go up. Britain recently raised taxes on production from the North Sea. And Russia has a strong incentive to rewrite the rules, since it agreed to generous terms for projects like Sakhalin back in the 1990s, when it had no money to develop its resources itself and was desperate to attract foreign investment. But its brutish behavior will probably backfire. The next time the oil price falls or money runs short, it might end up having to offer even more munificent terms to lure the oilmen back. Russia risks scaring off investors of all stripes, as well as potential customers for its oil and gas.

Moreover, Russia still needs the expertise of foreign firms. Gazprom and its start-controlled counterpart in the oil business, Rosneft, are hopeless at increasing their output-except by buying up other fh-m assets on the cheap. So the Russian state’s insistence on developing its oil and gas by itself is not just bad news for the shareholders of Shell, Mitsubishi and Mitsui. It is also bad news for ordinary Russians, who will not see as much oil wealth as they otherwise might.

What explains these self-defeating tactics? Mainly Mr. Putin’s belief that energy is a weapon with which to restore the lost greatness of the Soviet Union. No longer need Russia in the West cap-in-hand for money, as it did in Boris Yeltsin’s day. Now it can stand tall once more, not least in the neighboring ex-Soviet countries that many in Moscow have never reconciled themselves to losing. Whenever these places seem to look to the west, still more aspire to join such Western club as NATO or the European Union, the Russians have reacted petulantly, as they did earlier this year by imposing trade embargoes on Georgia and Moldova.

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