In 2006, Gazprom was made responsible for all exports of gas from Russia's eastern Siberian fields, outside of sales made through production sharing agreements (PSAs).

As Norway's North Sea production reaches its limits, and as Russia's Siberian fields are pumped dry, both countries have turned north.

With its huge Siberian fields, Russia produces 8.2 million barrels a day of the Commonwealth's 9.3 million barrel output.

"When a thief steals your car, he doesn't immediately know how to drive it," said Aleksandr V. Shadrin, a spokesman for Yukos, the west Siberian fields' former owner.

The first is the nee of the natural gas pipeline which our country will ict from the Siberian fields to Western Europe.

In the Siberian fields, the issues have involved similar economic grievances but also the far more basic question of management of the coal industry.

Comrade, work in the Siberian fields is arduous, and we have had serious difficulties in filling the posts we have there.

For example, Yukos recently reached an agreement to pump oil at one of its Siberian fields in partnership with Mol, the Hungarian oil company.

Workers in related industries were joining in the widespread stoppage, according to dispatches from the isolated Siberian fields, where miners have been organizing rallies and confronting political leaders in cities and towns.

But their efforts have thus far failed to stem the labor stoppage, the first in the region's history, according to strike leaders who report nonviolent solidarity in a dozen principal communities of the Siberian fields.