TROUBLES AHEAD?

"The Russian oil boom, which has produced a gusher of cash, political power and an opulent elite— and has helped fuel the country's renewed assertiveness in Georgia and elsewhere— is on shakier ground than officials in Moscow would like to admit. Most of the oil produced after the country's 1998 financial collapse has come from drilling and re-drilling old Soviet oil fields with more advanced equipment— squeezing more black gold out of the same ground— and efforts to develop new fields have been slow or non-existent. That strategy is potentially disastrous, said Valery Kryukov , who researches oil companies in western Siberia for a government-funded think tank. "If the situation which exists now stays the same, oil production will start to decline seriously in two years," Kryukov said in a phone interview from his offices in the city of Novosibirsk ." (Yahoo News, 22 August) RD