Is it the oil industry, the ship builders, the flag issuers or the insurers who issue the policies?
It is tantalising news for the world oil industry, America's boycott notwithstanding.
However, although the growing Russian influence may look strong, the fact is that it has a strong weakness: its economy is at every time becoming more dependent on the oil industry, and in particular, on the high oil prices.
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Practitioners within the oil industry tell me they feel it is almost an unspoken act of treason to profess doubts on peak oil.
Cold, dark, remote and with little physical or regulatory infrastructure to support an oil industry, it is the Arctic's wildcat energy frontier.
Despite what the rest of the oil industry claims, BP is not a rogue player when it comes to taking big risks at the expense of the Gulf.
Another way of thinking about it is the output of manufacturing industry minus any influence from oil, coal or other mining industries.
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Environmentalists strongly oppose shale-gas extraction due to fears that fracking may contaminate water supplies, the oil-sands industry because it is energy-intensive and dirty, and deep-water drilling because of the risk of oil spills like last year's Gulf of Mexico disaster.
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It seems to me that much of the oil industry is trying to do the same around peak oil.
To Exxon's great advantage, its deal is more important to Russia, which desperately needs foreign investment and expertise in its oil industry, than it is for Exxon, the world's biggest private oil firm.
This may be due to the high value of oil reserves in Norway as it is a major industry there.
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It is looking for inspiration anywhere, from Car magazine to the way that the oil industry polices itself, in its search for ways of promoting greater interest in transparency.
As such, it is an unfortunately excellent example of the sort of inaccurate reporting about the oil and natural gas industry that takes place in the American media many times every day.
Argentina's privatised oil industry is perhaps the most efficient in Latin America, and much of it is based in Patagonia, opposite the islands.
It is mostly small communities where people often make their living from the sea, either working in the oil and gas industry or as fishermen.
Stimulus money is pouring out of Washington and Ottawa, some of it already earmarked for research and technology to help the oil industry produce cleaner fuels.
Some people in the industry still believe that America's need for oil is so great that it cannot afford to reject oil, however dirty, from a friendly, secure supplier.
It may seem counter-intuitive when your plan is to reduce reliance on gasoline, but by investing in the oil industry, you benefit when companies profit from higher gas prices.
As it pumps out many more gadgets, the consumer-electronics industry is starting to attract the kind of scrutiny typically reserved for oil companies and mining firms.
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ConocoPhillips is the third largest oil company in the U.S. It operates in all sectors of the oil and natural gas industry such as exploration and production, midstream, refining and marketing, and petrochemicals.
However, the authors of the DHI's academic paper say the independence debate is "an unwelcome note of uncertainty for the oil and gas industry", at a time when it thinks it has finally got an understanding in Whitehall of the need for tax and regulatory predictability.
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