Marred Christmas- Poking the Russian Bear

“You are Fourth on my List of Loveable Evil Dictators- after Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler- you are the greatest..”

So today might be Christmas for some but it is very not Christmassy for others. Just like me, sat alone, snowed in, in my house in Leicestershire on Christmas Day with no humans to appear in the foreseeable future in my life, I am making a doll installation; the world is struggling with oil prices whilst Europe and USA celebrate Christmas. For major oil producing countries such as the Middle East and Russia, who do not even celebrate Christmas, this American “super low price oil” Christmas joke is really not funny. During December oil prices have dropped so much that the whole world has become shaken up. During my almost 4 years of driving experience, I do not remember the petrol station ever telling me a price lower than 130 p per liter of fuel and yet here I am, filling up my tank at only 113 p per liter. Some experts believe that this is all America’s fault as they try to cripple Russia and control their pipelines to the EU via Ukraine and Iranian and Syrian (The Middle East) pipelines to the EU via Syria in order to gain global control of the essential resource and become the global leader. The resource, oil, which America does not have enough of, to be the king of the world, has to be controlled in alternative ways. However all the negativity to one side, some see the oil price drop as a positive thing where this is America’s attempt to help Russia out and help them get rid of the Putin dictator. Help, of course I say with a tint of irony and sarcasm, as whilst it may seem that USA is helping Russia get rid of another evil dictator, it also seems that by doing this they hope to achieve a country that is weaker and no longer competes with America for world domination. Putin has already shown himself to be a master player in the chess game of energy politics so the hope that lower oil prices will crush Putin has to be met with a degree of uncertainty. The article describes today oil price affairs and tries to suggest the real reasons for them.