Relations between Germany, France and Turkey have been strictly bilateral for a long time, with varying intensity, styles and areas of cooperation. The European perspective that is now part of these relations has introduced a three-way dynamic. 

The contest for control of Russia's oil industry has been an integral feature of the country's politics ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The reconfiguration of the regional system of international relations as a result of the Arab revolutions has engendered fresh challenges for Russia, related, amongst other things, to deteriorating relations with the USA and other Western powers. 

The physical presence of China in Latin America is entering a phase of significant expansion, as the logical consequence of the rapid growth over the past decade of its trade, investment, and infrastructure for doing business in the region.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), a shipper-owned oil pipeline carrying Caspian oil to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossyisk, remains to this day the only oil export pipeline on Russian territory that is not under the control of the state company Transneft. Completed in 2001, the CPC was, from the start, the product of a fragile balance of power between states eager to maintain control of hydrocarbon flows and private companies able to finance the necessary infrastructure. Despite its economic success, the future of the CPC currently hinges on a shareholding dispute pitting Russia against Western private shareholders. This essay places the CPC dossier in the broader context of Russia's investment climate and argues that the dispute's dynamic is an important bellwether of the Russian energy policy.

Russia and Gazprom's natural gas strategies on the European market are the result of the uncertainties (volumes, prices) created by the liberalization of the EU natural gas market. The company's policy of asset acquisition, begun at the end of the 1990s, the multiplication of export networks, as well as the desire to preserve long-term contracts while benefiting from new contractual opportunities are all clear illustrations of this strategy. Yet the industrial and commercial strategies that Gazprom may develop cannot discount geopolitical issues. Therefore, Vladimir Putin's desire to place hydrocarbons at the service of his economic and foreign policies, notably by making use of large, internationalized companies owned primarily by the state, remains in the background.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Norway embarked on a policy to overcome old dividing lines in the High North and encourage closer cooperation with Russia, its large neighbor to the east. In addition to being neighbors in the High North - an area that still plays an important part in Russian strategic designs - both countries are important global energy players and share interests in developing energy resources in the area. However, their energy cooperation is influenced by many historical and geopolitical factors and concerns, and their bilateral relationship is strongly influenced by a visible disparity of their respective potentials and by their historically determined perceptions of each other. To what extent their cooperation in the energy sphere will be influenced by these perceptions, and to what extent their energy related interests overlap or collide are a few of the questions addressed in this brief analysis of the developing Russian-Norwegian energy relationship, particularly in light of Gazprom's decision to invite StatoilHydro to join the Shtokman gas field project.