What The US And Russia Are Really Quarreling Over: Pipelines

Lost in the excitement of this “White Bronco Moment,” many have missed the elephant in the room: the “Great Game”-style geopolitical standoff between the U.S. and Russia underlying it all, and which may have served as the impetus for Russia to grant Snowden asylum to begin with. What’s at stake? Natural gas.

Russia, of course, has its own surveillance state and has been described by The Guardian’s Luke Harding as a “Mafia State” due to the deep corruption that reportedly thrives under Putin’s watch.

It all comes as the U.S. competes with Russian gas production thanks in part to the controversial drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing — “fracking” – transforming the United States into what President Barack Obama has hailed as the “Saudi Arabia of gas.”

Russia produced 653 billion cubic meters of gas in 2012, while the U.S. produced 651 billion cubic meters, making them the top two producers in the world.

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