"We need to first develop oil fields in East Siberia, " he noted last month.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: The Bering Strait Tunnel Project

The Russian government recently decided to cancel tax breaks for several oil fields in East Siberia as of May 1.

FORBES: Russia Removes Tax Breaks And BP Suffers

It's looked not only at Brent crude but at some other exotic hydrocarbon cocktails - West Texas Intermediate, the Argus Sour Crude Index, Brent Blend or BFOE (the basket of the North Sea's Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk), Dubai and Oman, Tapis and Minas, and East Siberia-Pacific Ocean Blend.

BBC: Setting prices crudely

There's the slick salesman who needs billions of dollars in capital and technical know-how from the outside in order to exploit a quadrillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves (50 years' U.S. consumption) and 300, 000 miles of pipeline crisscrossing Russia from the Baltic border east to Tomsk in Siberia and from Uzbekistan north toward the Arctic Circle.

FORBES: Energy Tsar

Sailing along the coast of Siberia by the north-east passage, or Northern Sea Route (NSR), as Russians and mariners call it, cuts the distance between western Europe and east Asia by roughly a third.

ECONOMIST: The melting north | The

Russians were often forced to go to Siberia in the first place and are now upping sticks in the east and returning to the European heartland.

ECONOMIST: Russia does not exactly soar in its Asian backyard

Its gas is closer to market than Russia's, in western Siberia, or Turkmenistan's in Central Asia, which are 1, 000km east of Baku.

ECONOMIST: Of politics and pipelines