For most of the post-Soviet period, energy officials in Russia have resisted OPEC entreaties to participate in production cuts to help prop up oil prices, arguing that doing so was impossible because of the country’s cold climate. This week, confronted by a gusher of unsaleable oil and no place to put it, Russian energy executives unveiled plans to reduce production by a fifth by shutting down wells, many of them in the Arctic. Not eager to share the burden of shutdowns with OPEC, the Russian government long maintained that curtailing production was not as simple a matter for them as it was for the desert oil kingdoms. Supposedly, wells drilled in permafrost could not be shut down, lest they froze, requiring them to be drilled all over again when they were reopened. Oil analysts have called the cold weather claim one […]