Dr Shamil Midkhatovich Yenikeyeff

is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and a Senior Associate Member at the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford.

In the 1990s he worked in the Russian parliament as an advisor to the Chairman of the subcommittee for the organisation of the state authority system in Russia. He has also been advising corporations, financial institutions and public sector organizations on Russia and Central Asia.

Dr Yenikeyeff's current research focuses on the political economy of the oil and gas sectors of Russia and Central Asia with emphasis on economic policies, state-business relations, corporate strategies, political and economic risks.

He holds a first class degree in law from the Bashkir State University, Russia, and an M.Phil and D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University.

Books

His forthcoming book, The Battle for Russian Oil: Corporations, Regions, and the State, is to be published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

This book is about the politics of the Russian oil industry from 1991 to 2012. Within this twenty-year period, fierce battles emerged over who controls Russia’s oil industry: the Kremlin, Russian regional governors, or the oligarchs? These clashes determined the course of development for Russia’s oil sector, and have shaped the evolution of Russia’s political system, from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present day.

The book explores four themes: The first theme presents a story of the expanded influence of regional governors over Russia’s internal politics and economy in the 1990s. As a result, fledging domestic oil companies→

experienced considerable constraints on their business activities within a semi-disintegrated Russian state. The second theme examines the economic and political strategies deployed by these companies to achieve corporate consolidation over Russia’s oil sector in the late 1990s-early 2000s. During this period, oligarchs succeeded not only in undermining the grip of regional governors on the domestic oil industry, but also in emerging as a new political threat to the Kremlin. The third theme, then, focuses on the Kremlin’s re-assertion of state control over the national oil sector, and the declining political power of governors and oligarchs in Russia in the 2000s. Finally, the book reveals how the Kremlin elite, resource-rich regions and oil companies view the future of the domestic oil industry and its role in the modernisation of Russia.

Latest Publications

Shifting Balance of Power in the Russian Energy Sector (co-authored), Forbes.ru, 15 February 2013 (in Russian)
Russian Oil from Yeltsin to Sechin, Slon.ru, 1 February 2013 (in Russian)
Governors, Oligarchs, and Siloviki: Oil and Power in Russia (co-authored) , IFRI, 1 February 2013
Will Domestic Politics in the US and Russia Shape European Gas Markets?, Huffington Post (blog), 16 October 2012
Putin y las grandes empresas en 2012-2014: ¿de la inestable estabilidad a la estable inestabilidad?, Vanguardia Dossier, No.45, October 2012 (in Spanish)
Oil and the Corporate Re-Integration of Russia: The Role of Federal Oil Companies in Russia's Center-Periphery Relations in S. Mainwaring and D. Chalmers, (eds.), Problems Confronting Contemporary Democracies: Essays in Honor of Alfred Stepan, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012
Privatisierungspläne, Machtkämpfe, Instabilität Russlands Ölindustrie in der Putin-Krise, OSTEUROPA, No.6-8, September 2012 (in German)
Big business under threat in Putin’s Russia?, openDemocracy Russia, 23 May 2012
Putin and Russia's Big Business: From Unstable Stability to Stable Instability?, The Globalist, 22 May 2012
BP, Russian billionaires, and the Kremlin: a Power Triangle that never was, Oxford Energy Comment, November 2011
Energy Interests of the 'Great Powers' in Central Asia: Cooperation or Conflict?, International Spectator, Vol. 46, No.3, September 2011
The contest for control: oil and gas management in Russia (co-authored) in Paul Collier and Tony Venables, (eds.), Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
Earlier publications are available on the OIES website

Biography Publications Comments Talks	Dr Shamil Midkhatovich Yenikeyeff is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and a Senior Associate Member at the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford. In the 1990s he worked in the Russian parliament as an advisor to the Chairman of the subcommittee for the organisation of the state authority system in Russia. He has also been advising corporations, financial institutions and public sector organizations on Russia and Central Asia. Dr Yenikeyeff's current research focuses on the political economy of the oil and gas sectors of Russia and Central Asia with emphasis on economic policies, state-business relations, corporate strategies, political and economic risks. He holds a first class degree in law from the Bashkir State University, Russia, and an M.Phil and D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University.