City Diary: Russia and the Netherlands cement special relationship with Shell drilling deal
By Harriet Dennys, City Diary Editor 8:30AM BST 10 Apr 2013
Good to see Vladimir Putin looking for leadership guidance on his trade tour of the Netherlands.
Not from Shell chairman Jorma Ollila – although the pair’s date to sign off the Arctic drilling agreement between Shell and Russia’s state-owned Gazprom Neft was the focus of the Russian president’s Dutch detour.
Instead, Putin made a beeline for the Hermitage museum in Amsterdam, where he soaked up the opening of an exhibition on his political predecessor, Peter the Great. Peter de Grote, as he is in known in the Low Countries, used the Netherlands as the template for his mission to modernise 17th century Russia.
With that lucrative joint Russia-Netherlands Arctic oil project in the bag, it seems that special relationship continues…
