торба
ish Prime Minister David Lloyd George. “I believe we can Geographical Survey—it was estimated that the oil field
save her by trade.” It will be Russia’s epitaph. might hold 10 million barrels, making it one of the ten
When we jump ahead to the 1960s, it is the stirring of a largest fields in the world.
detente. Nixon has set up a promising new venture called British Petroleum also had its eye on Tengiz, having
the U.S.-U.S.S.R Trade and Economic Council, inviting lost much of its booked reserves to a nationalizing oil sec-
some thirty odd blue-chip companies to meet Brezhnev tor as well. With a Giffen-brokered Chevron delegation
and discuss possible deals. American companies were close to getting Moscow’s blessing for access to Tengiz,
intrigued but wary. The Soviet Union was not just a BP’s only chance for entry was to make a “disrespectful
high-risk market; it was utterly incomprehensible. It end run around Moscow” by courting Kazakhstan direct-
was James Giffen, the anti-hero whose Icarus-like fall ly. BP had its own Giffen in the form of an oilman named
occurred in 2003, in the largest foreign bribery case Jack Grynberg, a Belarussian Jew and a former member
in history, who facilitated the first of what will be many of the Jewish guerilla group Irgun, who had befriended
deals to come. A California haberdasher’s son with a Nursultan Nazerbayev, then leader of Soviet Kazakhstan
fascination for American aristocracy (he married his first and currently its president. After some tennis in Caracas,
wife, LeVine suggests, in part for her name), Giffen had Nazerbayev has slipped an arm under Grynberg’s and
finished law school with a specialty in Soviet trade and, promised, “Jack, you will have Tengiz.” BP head Browne
with his “telemarketer personality,” ingratiates himself is immediately dispatched to Kazakhstan, on the first pri-
with top officials in both countries, becoming the fixer for vate jet to land in the country since the Shah of Iran’s.
the biggest oil deals over the next two decades. But an early deal was soon canceled under pressure from
By the 1980s, Giffen had befriended the rising star of Moscow and the U.S., which both backed Chevron. BP
the Politburo, Mikhail Gorbachev, at the start of the So- was given access to Azerbaijan as a consolation prize.
viet Union’s last crisis before it would collapse. Trade be-
tween the two superpowers had all but halted. The Sovi- “This is not a third-world
et Union (in what sounds like the beginning of a bad joke)
intellect,” Chevron exec-
was exporting few finished products besides vodka, wood-
utives working in Kaza-
en dolls, and weapons. Gorbachev had legalized 49 per-
cent of Soviet resources to foreign ownership, and Ameri-
khstan told their bosses
can businesses looked to Giffen to devise a plan that could
back home, with surprise.
protect their interests while turning a profit. his plan—
by his own account, “fucking ingenious”—was to bring Though BP’s gambit was ultimately ineffectual, it
in a consortium of big businesses with an oil company at marked an important change in the way the Soviet re-
the helm. The oil company would drill for exports, split its publics saw themselves in terms of Moscow. The repub-
profits with Moscow, and set aside the rest for currency lics were trying out autonomy, were seeing how it felt, and
exchange, ensuring that the other companies could con- these inchoate stirrings of nationalism would soon culmi-
vert their rubles into dollars while leaving Moscow vir- nate in full independence only a few years later. Kazakh-
tually out of the process. But which? Exxon was too big, stan and Azerbaijan were irked by Russia’s willingness to
Mobil too maverick. Chevron seemed just right. sell assets they felt belonged as much to them. Who was
Chevron’s story was typical to most oil companies at Russia to decide their future unilaterally? They were not
the time. It had grown from a local California company to averse to foreign investors—quite the opposite—but feel-
a global power, thanks to huge reserves in Saudi Arabia ing fragile after years of Soviet rule, they were suspicious
and Bahrain. But Saudi Arabia had begun to nationalize of deals made on their behalf.
its oil sector, and with prices collapsing from $31 to $10 BP, with its promise from Moscow, arrived in
a barrel, Chevron was desperate for booked reserves— Azerbaijan just as the country was gaining independence.
oil it could draw on in the future. Though there was lit- Led by a strongman with surprisingly unerring business
tle information on Kazakhstan’s mythical Tengiz field instincts, Azerbaijan canceled BP’s deal. It would take
at the time—the best information came from the U.S. years of politicking, backstabbing, promise-scotching
readrussia.com/2008/WiNTer/ 72
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