Vladimir, you naughty boy! II

For those of you remembering my first story about how Norwegian salmon all of a sudden became contaminated and banned from import to Russia, this is a follow up, and some new developments in other matters of Russian Norwegian peaceful co-existence.

IMPORT / EXPORT of Norwegian salmon

Russia stopped imporing Norwegian Salmon after discovering some "mysterious" contamination of the fish. The salmon were tested in several laboratories in EU, and found not to be contaminated. Then Russians demanded to control all fishfarms exporting to Russia before giving permission to export. That included that Russian inspectors had to be treated with food and drinks at the plant. Ok. So the thing was settled. We thought. But no. Last week Russia found a new way. Now they demand that all exporters have to EXPORT to APPROVED Russian IMPORTERS. That means chaos, because there are VERY few approved Russian importers. So again a big loss of export for many Norwegian fishfarms

ILLEGAL RUSSIAN FISHING in Barents sea

In the Barents sea Norway had a lot of problems with Russian trawlers fishing illegally. The estimate of this illegal fishing is 100 tonnes. Russian denies of course, as any five year old would do, and says 20 tonnes. And because of this "horrendous accusation" they also demand to put Russian inspectors on all Norwegian vessels fishing in Russian zone as punishment. The problem is that the differance (80 tonnes) have to be taken off the Norwegian fishers, because Norway conducts professional control with quotas to maintain a sustainable development of fishing resources. A big loss for Norwegian fishers.

OIL and GAS

Norsk Hydro and Statoil have worked with the Russians to develop the Shtokman oil and gas field in the Barentssea. The verbal agreement was that those Norwegian companies were going to be partners in developing the field. Suddenly all deals were off, and Gazprom said they would develop it themselves, although lacking the technology and skills.

We all have our Russian neighbor. And to all you Georgian reading this, wondering about the development in the Russia-Georgia relationship: Rely on the worst case scenario. Apply the psychology of Ericssons second stage development theory :-) in your analysis.