Results of the first day of SPIEF

Once the St. Petersburg Economic Forum was conceived as a Russian window to the world investment community. The oil and gas agenda of this year, unlike a number of others, is seemingly quite consistent with this status. The heads of all the Western majors - ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, Eni and BP - came to the forum, along with heads of about a dozen second-tier companies more and a number of high-ranking foreign officials.

The global nature of the discussions about what will happen to the market after a record in the past decade fall in the oil prices seemed entirely appropriate in a country that produces more oil than the rest of the world and exports more gas than others. The things with the content of these discussions were worse.