In a reflection of Russia's deepening economic woes, Gazprom, one of the Kremlin's chief instruments of foreign policy, is flailing. Company executives recently announced a drastic cut in Gazprom's export forecast for 2009 and predicted earnings would fall by up to $25.6 billion.
The announcement by Gazprom marks the second downward revision already in 2009 for the company. On March 31, Gazprom's deputy chairman, Alexander Medvedev, revealed that the monopoly now expected to "deliver 140 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas" in 2009 at a projected price "in the region of $260 per thousand cubic meters (tcm)," the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported. Just weeks earlier, Gazprom officials had been predicting deliveries of 170 bcm in 2009 at a price of $280/tcm.
In 2008 the company exported 179 bcm of gas, earning roughly $400/tcm. The latest downward revision for 2009 represents a decline in deliveries of 22 percent over last year's total.
