The Bush administration has often pointed to Iran’s oil and gas resources as prima facie evidence that their nuclear power ambitions must be related to weapons. After all, the expressed logic goes, why would a country that is well endowed with oil and gas want nuclear power stations. (Of course, that argument is bunk, especially when you consider that Iran is a large country with nearly 70 Million residents, many of whom do not even have access to electricity yet.)
I ran across an interesting article about Gazprom, the Russian state owned natural gas supplier, that helps to reinforce my thoughts on the matter of why an organization that has some gas might still be interested in investing in nuclear power. The article, published in MOSNEWS.com is titled Gazprom May Expand into Nuclear Power Generation — Paper. Here is a quote from that article:
Under the plan, Gazprom would build and control the nuclear plants, while the fall in demand for gas-fueled electricity generation would enable the company to export more of its gas to lucrative foreign markets, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified officials in the Presidential Administration.
Interestingly enough, there are some bankers that do not like the idea very much. Here is what the above article had to say about their perspective:
Deutsche Bank’s Russian wing said on Jan. 27 that the managers of Gazprom, which has banking, media and machine tools divisions, should seek to concentrate on their core business of gas production.
“We are concerned that the government and Presidential Administration are continuing to view Gazprom as an instrument for solving the country’s problems,” the bank said, quoted by the Associated Press agency.
