Surgut might have fallen apart,as did some other Russia cities.

In the chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union.That it didn't is a testament to the rootedness and stability of its political and business leadership.I was born in Surgut,,my children were bron here,and my grandchildren were bron here,Alexander Sidorov ,the city's longtime mayor,proudly declares.Surgut's economic anchor,the oil company Surgutneftegas,Russia's fourth largest producer,is majority owned by local managers.And unlike most Russian oil barons,who rule their western Siberian empires from Moscow,Surgutneftegas's general director,billionaire Vladimir Bogdanov,makes his home in town.Though now a towering figure in Surgut,Bogdanov started out as a common neftyanik.


Surgutneftegas is using the oil boom to finance an ambitious modernization program.At the oil field management center,computer engineers have custom designed an enormous digital map to monitor and adjust the field's performance.The map displays real-time information sent by coded radio signal from pump stations,active wells,and pipelines.From this display,managers can tell how much electric power is being consumed,whether a well needs repairs,and whether a pipeline is leaking.Protection of the environment,barely a concern in Soviet times,is being part of the new ethos.It's not that the oil industry has suddenly become softhearted toward flora and fauna.Rather,high oil prices provide an incentive to minimize waste,as do license agreements that include big fines for spills.Moreover,as Russian oil firms have become global players,they've also become more sensitive to international concerns about the environment.Maintaining a good reputation is very important,says Alexey Knizhnikov of the World Wildlife Fund in Moscow.Otherwise,doing business becomes difficult.Lubov Malyshkina,director of the environmental department at Surgutneftegas,is a chemical engineer with an advanced degree in the science of corrosion protection and geoecology.She also serves as an elected offical in the regional parliament.In Soviet times,she says ,the oil ministry in Moscow,oblivious to local conditions,would send chemicals that proved useless to treat oil spills and other hazards.Now Malyshkina's department,drawing on a nearly 500 million-dollar budget,makes its own purchase.She shows me one,a Swedish-made Truxor vehicle with tanklike treads that break up oil saturated peat so that spills can be cleaned up.The company is also investing five million dollars in a new plant for recycling old tires into fibers that can be mixed into the asphalt used to pave company roads.



For more than ten years oil has been at the center of a violent and chaotic power struggle in Neftryugansk.The difficulties began in the mid-1990s,when a nouveau riche Moscow banker snagged one of Russia's prime oil producers-and the town's sole large employer-in a privatization auction.The banker,Mikhail Khodorkovsky,made the Nefteyugansk unit the core subsidiary in his new oil company,known as Yukos.But the antagonized the city be delaying tax payment,causing city workers to go unpaid for months.Mayor Petukhov,a former neftyanik,led pubic protests against the new Moscow owners,who,he said,spit into our faces,the faces of oilers.The mayor's murder,at the age of 48,outraged the townpeople,many of whom connected the deed to his stand against Yukos.This blood is on your hands,read anti-Yukos banners put up at city hall by Petukhov's mourners.



For five years no one was brought to justice.During this time the city was governed by a corrupt official who eventually was sent to jail for swindling oil workers out of their promised retirement homes in Russia's balm