You might be interested in these figures:

- 700000 tonnes: The copper that was produced every year in Zambia in the 1970s, soon after nationalisation.

- 249100 tonnes: The quantity that was produced in 2000, after 30 years of mismanagement, waste and corruption in the state copper company.

- 427000 tonnes: The quantity produced today, after the mines have been sold to KCM, a private Indian company.

- 900000 tonnes: The quantity that will be produced in 2008, thanks to KCM´s upgrades and investments that will develop new mines and processing plants and expand old mines´ life.

via: http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=displayblog&month=05&year=2006#1713

I think Russia's strategy is a little different than the other petrostates. Russia sees energy as its last card as a major world power and it intends to play it as best it can. To do that, it needs enough foreign investment to access technology and know-how, while not allowing foreign companies to get control of strategic assets. In the case of Sakhalin, the government is sending a very strong signal that Sakh 4-5 should go to a Russian-led consortium.

While the Russian government has not hesitated to nationalize Russian-owned assets - ie YUKOS - in the energy sector, it has not siezed the assets of major foreign investors. I don't think we will see expropriation in this case. I think we may see a minor tweaking of the PSAs, about which the majors will piss and moan, but ultimately go along with it. What choice do they have?

It has to be noted that the Sakhalin PSAs are likely to be a pretty unique example. The Russian government realized a long time ago that PSAs favor investors over host country governments. Thus, they have not allowed any new PSAs since the Sakhalin agreements a decade ago. I would be shocked if we see a PSA signed with a foreign oil major in the foreseeable future in Russia.

Russia isn't Zambia, it isn't Venezuela. It is a country that sees itself as a great power in world affairs. After a decade of humiliation, they are now trying to leverage the energy card to ensure a signficant role in world affairs. For this to be a successful strategy, Russia needs to combine this leverage with structural reform at home to develop competitive industries and a broad economic base to underpin its recovery. Unfortunately, while Russia is proving somewhat shrewd in leveraging the energy card, it has been very, very slow on structural reform. Thus, I am not sure the energy superpower strategy will be successful in the medium to long term.

All true, Steve, but remember also that Putin and his cronies-- both inside and outside the government-- need their cut, as did Chernomyrdin, and Yeltsin and Berezovsky and Abramovich and the semya and Chubais and so many others before him. Putin's geopolitical strategy derives as much from simple corruption as from any coherent great-power game. Scratch a neo-soviet pol and you'll see a thief with a numbered Swiss account and some Cote d'Azur property.

Two keywords you forgot to mention are: review and renegotiation. This is not what happened in Bolivia where the army invaded private property of a state-owned company of a close ally who invested more than a billion dollars in Bolivia, which, at the time they started investing, didnt' even have how to extract it or whom to sell their natural gas. Renegotiation is part of the contract. Sending the army to invade and expropriate foreign private companies is a risky and irresponsible populist measure.