20,659 research outputs found
Russian and Caspian hydrocarbons: energy supply stakes for the European Union
The crisis between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 highlights the fragility and instability of transporting gas from the Caspian and Central Asia to Europe via the "Caucasus transit corridor". The feasibility of one of the EU's possible strategies for diversifying its energy supplies might now be called into question. The aim of this article is to examine the new strategies that could emerge in the producing countries as well as those of international oil companies, and then look at what the consequences might be as far as the EU's diversification strategy is concerned.ENERGY SUPPLY ; HYDROCARBONS ; DIVERSIFICATION STRATEGY ; EUROPEAN UNION ; CASPIAN ; RUSSIA ; INTERNATIONAL MARKET
The russian oil industry between public and private governance : obstacles to international oil companies' investment strategies
The low level of involvement by international oil companies in Russia seems difficult to explain given what development of its resources and production has to offer. There are still many restrictions and contradictions, born of the particular institutional and political environment of the Russian oil industry at the end of fifteen years of transition, that act as a bar to international integration. Three factors currently define the establishment of relations with foreign investors. First, because of the many different levels of negotiation with Russian companies, the State and the Regions, the decisions are based on complex relations between the various forces. Second, the reforms, and especially privatisation and the allocation of rights of ownership to deposits, are considered by sizeable sections of public opinion and many political classes to be illegitimate, thus making the issue of international investment and foreign presence still more complicated. Finally, the State's wish to take back the oil industry in order to use it to fulfil its economic and foreign policies is creating further uncertainty. These three elements seriously restrict the entry of international oil companies to the Russian market.industrie pétroliÚre;Russie
Coherent curvature radiation and Fast Radio Bursts
Fast radio bursts are extragalactic radio transient events lasting a few
milliseconds with a ~Jy flux at ~1 GHz. We propose that these properties
suggest a neutron star progenitor, and focus on coherent curvature radiation as
the radiation mechanism. We study for which sets of parameters the emission can
fulfil the observational constraints. Even if the emission is coherent, we find
that self-absorption can limit the produced luminosities at low radio
frequencies and that an efficient re-acceleration process is needed to balance
the dramatic energy losses of the emitting particles. Self-absorption limits
the luminosities at low radio frequency, while coherence favours steep
optically thin spectra. Furthermore, the magnetic geometry must have a high
degree of order to obtain coherent curvature emission. Particles emit photons
along their velocity vectors, thereby greatly reducing the inverse Compton
mechanism. In this case we predict that fast radio bursts emit most of their
luminosities in the radio band and have no strong counterpart in any other
frequency bands.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in A&
Tuning the order of colloidal monolayers: assembly of heterogeneously charged colloids close to a patterned substrate
We study the behavior of negatively charged colloids with two positively
charged polar caps close to a planar patterned surface. The competition between
the different anisotropic components of the particle-particle interaction
patterns is able by itself to give rise to a rich assembly scenario: colloids
with charged surface patterns form different crystalline domains when adsorbed
to a homogeneously charged substrate. Here we consider substrates composed of
alternating (negative/neutral, positive/neutral and positive/negative) parallel
stripes and, by means of Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the ordering
of the colloids on changing the number of the stripes. We show that the
additional competition between the two different lengths scales characterizing
the system ( the particle interaction range and the size of the stripes)
gives rise to a plethora of distinct particle arrangements, where some
well-defined trends can be observed. By accurately tuning the substrate charged
motif it is possible to, promote specific particles arrangements,
disfavor crystalline domains or induce the formation of extended, open
clusters.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figure
Gazprom's export strategies under the institutional constraint of the Russian gas market
Russia and its main gas company Gazprom, essential suppliers for the European gas market, are today at the centre of the debate surrounding the security of the European Union's gas supply. A variety of factors have focussed interest on the question of Gazprom's industrial strategies and more precisely :the Gazprom's ability to meet its future contractual commitments. The gas market liberalisation in Europe is bringing about some significant changes in the relations (especially contractual ones) that the EU had established with its main natural gas suppliers. The aim of this paper is to throw some light on how European gas market liberalisation is affecting and changing the strategies of one of the EU's essential gas suppliers, namely Russia. The export policies developed by Gazprom are however largely conditioned by the particular characteristics (essentially institutional) of its domestic market, not only in terms of supply and demand but also prices". It is important to take into account this aspect in order to understand the Russian gas export strategy.EXPORTATION ; NATURAL GAS ; RUSSIA ; GAZPROM ; CONTRACT
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