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Tuesday, 02 December, 2008, 02:20 GMT | more >>

Gazprom wins right to bear arms



By Upstream staff 

Russia's parliament, the Duma, has given gas giant Gazprom and pipeline monopoly Transneft the right to form armed units to patrol the country's oil and gas pipelines.

A law, backed by 341 deputies in the 450-seat State Duma, gives the two state-controlled giants the right to employ and arm their own security units.

Legislator Gennady Gudkov, of the left-wing Fair Russia party, opposed the law, saying it opened the way for the creation of corporate armies in Russia, a Reuters report said.

Gazprom is already described by some observers as a state within a state - it controls some of Russia's biggest media outlets, has a watertight grip on gas exports and owns the country's third largest bank.

But the law's authors said it was needed to help the companies protect their infrastructure against militant attacks.

"A couple of terrorist acts and an ensuing ecological catastrophe would be enough to immediately declare Russia an unreliable partner and supplier of energy resources," said Alexander Gurov, one of the deputies who drafted the law.

Gazprom owns all trunk pipelines transporting natural gas across Russia and exporting it abroad. Transneft controls Russia's oil and oil product pipelines.


Wednesday, 04 July, 2007, 12:30 GMT  | last updated: Wednesday, 04 July, 2007, 12:35 GMT

On the march: the Duma has approved a law allowing Gazprom and Transneft to raise and arm their own security services in order to protect Russia's pipelines
 

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