Personal a/c. Comms & reputation. Energy&capmkts. 20 yrs FSU, lots MENA. MA @warstudies. Rugby/Spurs/cricket/boxing, food&booze. Husband & Dad
Sutton / City of London
Joined April 2009
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Do Witkoff / Kushner know that they're repeating a particularly nasty period of post soviet gas trading - ITERA / ETG / Rosukrnergo? One could imagine they would, because people like Firtash became billionaires over night. And underwriting Putin's regime
So Witkoff and Kushner become Firtash? A third party intermediary in the gas trade. Vehicle to be registered in Zug or Vienna. Will Moglevitch be a sleeping partner, or do they have the capital in place? Opacity will be baked into AmerikaGazUkrnEnergo.com?
The U.S. proposal: a quick resumption of Russian natural-gas sales to Europe via Ukrainian pipelines, with an American company acting as an intermediary and money going to an escrow account. Our scoop. wsj.com/world/europe/u-s-pus…
for a lot of those years, was sending IK press releases that she will have ignored ;-) One of the jounros out there with deep and broad strategic understanding of pipeline / energy geopolitics. (1)
Watching people (younger generation and Americans mostly) “discover” European pipeline geopolitics after having followed this stuff for nearly 30 years is 🫠🥴😡 The legacy of this story sat on the opening credits of Have I got News For You for decades.
Can’t wait for them to discover Nat gas-related Smolensk conspiracies next. Or the true origins of some major Geneva commodity trading houses. Or the goings on with the South Stream extension and Bulgaria.
As a truly independent journalist in this space who always endeavours to be neutral I am available for informed commentary on all of the above. Shame everyone is turning to armchair experts who only discovered what the map of Poland looks like this weekend.
But seriously ask me anything because my career history is the “receipt” that speaks for itself on this matter.
First job: Reporter for the Warsaw Business Journal c. 2002 based in Warsaw. Follow the transition but also the growing anxiety about energy security in the region.
Become obsessed with the great game of energy and pipeline politics. Especially developments with the BTC pipeline.
Second job: reporter and editor at the Baku-based Caspian Business News, where I immerse myself in the regional great game without the advantage of being associated with a major title.
Third job: associate editor of BP’s internal magazine Horizon, which gives me insight into these operations from the inside.
Fourth Job: Graduate trainee at Reuters where - as part of the amazing Manchukistan training programme - I get a grounding in how to report on transition and destabilisation narratives in the context of the grander financial and economic narrative.
Fifth job: Platts NatGas price reporter where I break the story about the first LNG terminal to be build on Warsaw’s shoreline.
Sixth Job: CNBC producer, where I widen my knowledge to broader financial and central banking affairs.
Seventh job: FT Alphaville - where well, it’s just like an Adrenalin shot of further understanding.
The rest is pretty much what people are familiar with… so I won’t bore you with that.
13 months apart. He's taller than me now and is beginning to put on some heft. Ive slimmed down a little. #fatherhood
What a great set up to a final day. All 4 results on offer. Love test #cricket – at Sutton, London
Two wickets in the first over from @KagisoRabada25 as South Africa make a brilliant start to the final day of the deciding Test against Australia.
Follow the action from Cape Town with the @BBCSport live text.
#bbccricket #SAvAUS
bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live…
Paddy Blewer retweeted
Why I think Surrey should be signing Sir Jimmy Anderson..it’s a no brainer 😊
And so adamant about this piece written for @the_rey_cricket it is open for everyone to read therey.counterpress.media/op… 🏏
For those of us old enough to remember, think Itera, ETG, Highrock, Atlantic Caspian, Cedric Brown and..... the past doesnt repeat but does echo / rhyme – at Sutton, London
The former CEO of a $25bn US gas venture has accused Russian energy giant Novatek of secretly controlling the project, triggering a mass resignation of company leadership over fears it is violating US sanctions.
A wild story with @JamieSmythF:
ft.com/content/e9cfbfbb-e65a…
Greeks / israelis happy? Turks and Egyptians annoyed? – at Sutton, London
🇦🇪🇱🇾 @XRG_official reportedly in talks with @eni to acquire a stake in its Libyan operations lyo.ly/8if4
Paddy Blewer retweeted
The right’s obsession with ‘civil war’ in Britain
'But the nice thing about being an armchair warrior is that you get all the thrill of the fantasy with none of the risks. And when the shots are (metaphorically) being fired, you can just log off.'
ft.com/content/3736714a-2058…
Paddy Blewer retweeted
I would quite like to reach the end of my life comfortably being able to state that we have had a better Prime Minister than this man in my lifetime. The fact that the bar to clear is both so low and clearly so high is not to my liking at all.
Paddy Blewer retweeted
Extraordinary stuff. Makes you wonder what else western intelligence agencies have on the Trump syndicate and when it might come out, now that the administration has aligned itself against Europe
The GRU hacked into Jared Kushner's iPhone. Dutch military intelligence (MIVD) then recruited a GRU spy who gave them access to the hacked phone. What MIVD discovered was that Kushner had access to two bank accounts --one Azerbaijani, the other Israeli --where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirati ruler Mohammed bin Zayed deposited money. It sounds like a slightly far-fetched episode of "Slow Horses," but it's real. And it proves just how eye-poppingly corrupt this administration was and continues to be as its "special envoy" decides the fate of tens of millions in Europe in the Middle East. Simply incredible reporting by Matthew Cole, drawn from his new book on Kushner. vanityfair.com/story/jared-k…
I want to believe #londonirish can come back. I loved going as a family to Brentford. Hope they dont do reading but find a way to be in London. Hope is a dangerous thing #coyi #rugby – at Sutton, London
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Paddy Blewer retweeted
Such a novel idea from the always brilliant Martin Vander Weyer in @spectator - have a conversation with people who were born abroad and you may get a more interesting perspective about immigration. Let’s hope it catches on!
