Compared with Gazprom's super-privileged position in the economy, its political privilege is more prominent.
This is because Gazprom is an important diplomatic chip for Russia and plays an important role in Russian politics.
We know that in Russia, the highest leadership level of a state-owned enterprise reflects the importance of the enterprise, such as the "gray bishop" known as the Kremlin, and The Shechin, a close confidant of Putin, controls Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft. And many of Mr. Putin's cronies, like Mr. Xie Chin, are in charge of important businesses while serving as senior government officials.
And Gazprom and its predecessor, whether in the Soviet period or in the current Russian period, its top official has always been the highest level of political status in all industries and enterprises in Russia, appointed to the Kremlin.
Due to the political nature of gazprom's top leader, it is also the forerunner and executor of Russia's political intentions, and the energy economy must serve politics, and Gazprom has naturally become an important chip in Russia's diplomatic negotiations.
For example, in the natural gas procurement negotiations with Asian buyers such as China, Japan and South Korea, Russia uses gas trade as an important bargaining chip through Gazprom, so that China, Japan and South Korea can contain each other and form competition. In the end, it was forced by the 2014 crisis to reach a 30-year gas contract with China.
In the case of the CIS countries, in order to reduce or prevent the natural gas of the Central Asian CIS countries from directly reaching the consumer market without going through Russia, Gazprom began to invest a lot of resources in negotiations with the Central Asian countries, and finally reached a "net price" acquisition agreement to ensure the direct control of the Russian government over the natural gas exports of the Central Asian countries.
Gazprom is also an important tool for Ukraine, and in the 2014 crisis, Gazprom directly cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on the grounds that Ukraine was in arrears in gas bills, putting pressure on the Poroshenko government.
In dealing with Western Europe, Gazprom relied on Western Europe's dependence on its natural gas energy, thus becoming an important sword in the hands of the Russian government.
Relying on Gazprom and domestic resources, Russia has not only signed gas supply agreements with many countries in Western Europe, but also successfully become the largest source of natural gas supply for several of them, making Russian gas account for 30% to 40% of the European market.
Even the completion of Nord Stream One and Nord Stream 2 was a means of Gazprom, during which Gazprom hired former German Chancellor Schroeder as director, making Nord Stream One successfully completed and put into use, and Nord Stream 2, although not currently invested in sanctions, was indeed built under the siege of the United States.
At the same time, under the control of Gazprom, Europe can not leave Russian gas, although Western Europe has been seeking to get rid of it, but it has never been achieved, even because of sanctions, Western Europe has never completely torn its face with Gazprom. And the reasons for this have already been explained. The result of the original Western European sanctions on some natural gas was to buy it from the United States at seven times the price.
Politically and diplomatically, Russian gas has always stood on the front line of Russia's external affairs, forming a foreign strategy of containing Asia, suppressing the CIS, and blackmailing Europe.