Le grand secret énergétique de la Russie.
En fait, Gazprom ne produit que tout juste ce qu'il faut pour couvrir ses besoins intérieurs, vendu très bon marché dans la continuité du système socialiste. Ses bénéfices ne reposent que sur l'achat du gaz asiatique revendu au prix fort en Europe. Mais si les républiques asiatiques commencent à couper leurs ventes au profit des nouveaux consommateurs comme la Chine, le système peut s'écrouler. gazprom pourrait avoir du mal à fournir le marché russe dès 2010.The surprising Achilles' heel of Gazprom is that it produces only about 550 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas—just enough to supply its own domestic market. It relies on cheap imports from Central Asia to meet the majority of its other commitments to customers in Europe, amounting to nearly 80bcm. And since only Gazprom's foreign customers pay full market value, it's the company's exports which make up the bulk of Gazprom's revenues—$21 billion for the second quarter of 2007 alone. Now those nations on which Gazprom's profits rely—including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan—are beginning to cut their own deals with big new customers like China. The deals are in turn becoming an existential threat to Gazprom, one of Russia's most valuable strategic levers of power.