Changing the game

Steven Wardlaw and Byron Romain of Baker Botts discuss the new role for foreign investment in the Russian Federation's hydrocarbon industry

A gradual shift has occurred in the Russian Federation's oil and gas industry over the past few years. No longer content to auction off rights to its assets and receive rents in various forms in exchange, the industry – already vertically integrated domestically – is attempting a similar integration internationally by establishing itself in the midstream and downstream sectors outside the Russian Federation (and, in some instances, in the upstream sector as well).

It is a shift that should come