Russia is the world's biggest oil producer after Saudi Arabia. The price of oil has lately been leaping from peak to peak. So the shares of Russian oil companies ought to be soaring-right? In fact, they have been falling through the floor. Russia's RTS index, stuffed full of energy companies, has been the worst-performing stockmarket in the world over the past couple of months, and one of its biggest oil companies, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, has been one of the worst-performing stocks. "There have to be very ugly things happening in Russia to make it possible to bankrupt an oil company when oil is at $40 a barrel," says Kaha Kiknavelidze, an analyst at Troika Dialog, a broking firm. Indeed there do, and those things may give foreign companies cause to hesitate before wading in to help Russia develop its oilfields. In present circumstances, this is a troubling thought.
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