|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
Don Evans Rejects Top Russian Oil Job
Former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a close friend of President Bush, said Monday he will not accept the offer of a top job at Russian state oil company OAO Rosneft. Evans said he had decided against pursuing the offer because he could not commit to the time required to do the job correctly. Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the possibility of a top job with Rosneft during a meeting with Evans two weeks ago in Moscow. Evans said he had relayed his decision by telephone and e-mail message on Monday. He said his current business commitments plus his family commitments - he has a 16-year-old son in high school - would not enable him to take the post.
Story Continues Below "I knew that to do this right would require a substantial part of my time and I just wasn't in a position to offer that," Evans said in an interview with a small group of reporters. The Wall Street Journal in an editorial on Monday urged Evans not to take the post, saying Putin's government wanted to hire Evans as a way of gaining influence with the administration and papering over questionable government actions involving the Russian oil industry. "You can bet that Mr. Putin figures that in hiring Mr. Evans he would be buying more than just the American's energy expertise," the Journal editorial said. In the interview, Evans, who spent 30 years in the oil and gas business in Texas, said that his decision was based on the time commitment involved. He said that in his discussions about the job, the Russians had repeatedly stressed they understood the need to run the company in a way that will meet Western rules in order to attract investors. "I very much welcomed their acknowledgement of how very important transparency and trust are and complying with international rules," Evans said. A week ago, the Russian state-owned gas company OAO Gazprom named former German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder as chairman of a $5 billion Russian-controlled venture to build a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. Rosneft now is 100 percent owned by Russian government, but the government is scheduled to sell as much as 49 percent of its stock in an initial public offering in 2006. As Bush's first commerce secretary, Evans spent much time in consultations with Putin's government over the need to integrate Russia more fully in the global economy. Evans participated in an economic forum sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow last week. He also held meetings with U.S. executives doing business in Russia and with senior officials of Putin's government.
© 2005 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note:
Inside Cover Stories
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Print Page 
Forward Page 
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2012 NewsMax.Com |