While the world focuses on Russia’s oil-freeze talks with OPEC, there are discussions behind closed doors in the Kremlin that will have a much more significant impact on the nation’s energy industry. The petrodollars that underpin Russia’s national budget are evaporating. When crude prices were high, increasing revenue simply meant encouraging companies like Rosneft OJSC and Lukoil PJSC to push output higher, said Alexander Nazarov, an oil and gas analyst at Gazprombank. Now the Kremlin and the companies must figure out a new way to divide up the bounty, even measures that could harm output in the long term, he said. “The Russian budget is starving,” Nazarov said by e-mail. “The government understands that with a tax hike it would hurt future prospects, but it has no choice.” While President Vladimir Putin has reasserted control of oil and gas production, much of the industry remains independent — managed through […]