The evolution of Russia's gas sector: infrastructural lock-ins, limited access institutions, domestic balance of power and rent redistribution

2013年，俄罗斯国有天然气公司Gazprom的天然气出口垄断被打破。另外两家公司-主要国有的Rosneft和私营的Novatek -被允许进入俄罗斯液化天然气（LNG）出口。然而，尽管来自国内行为者的压力，俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司仍然是俄罗斯天然气通过管道的唯一出口商。本论文解决的第一个问题是：如何解释俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司领导的管道天然气出口的单一行动者模式的持续存在？第二个问题是：为什么俄罗斯在2013年打破了俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司对液化天然气出口的垄断？第三个问题是双重的：为什么液化天然气出口只向两个天然气生产商开放，以及俄罗斯私营天然气公司诺瓦泰克（Novatek）加入该国天然气行业组织如何适应2010年代俄罗斯整体政治经济环境？我依赖于二级研究和10次专家访谈的数据。我使用一个单一的案例研究设计，辅以解释结果的过程跟踪分析的结果，通过一个新颖的概念框架，在一个单一的连贯narration.While大多数的作品，看看俄罗斯的天然气战略的角度来看，俄罗斯的外部天然气消费者，我把观点转移到国内水平。我认为，资源丰富的国家倾向于制定有限准入令（LAO），正如North等人（2009）所描述的那样，即：它们创造制度环境，限制由政治和经济精英组成的主导联盟获得租金和特权。我认为，外部冲击会影响特定能源或资源部门参与者的相对权力，并引发分配产生租金活动的机构的转变（例如，天然气出口），以反映那些实力增强的行为体的利益。然而，我认为，分配制度的变化受到行业和国家特定的基础设施和技术锁定的限制。这些锁定减少了改革的动力，因此，随着时间的推移，使产业组织的某些方面永久化。实证结果证实了这一因果逻辑。我表明，除了俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司在俄罗斯的天然气出口战略的其他演员的列入是在获得天然气出口租金产生的分配机构，反映了在俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司的相对议价能力的下降和增加的Rosneft和诺瓦泰克的重新调整的结果。我证明，这些机构的调整只影响该行业的基础设施锁定之外的领域，即：液化天然气，这是没有物理约束的单一国内和出口天然气管道供应渠道在天然气行业的最初发展。此外，天然气出口仍然有限，因为Rosneft和Novatek的高级管理人员与统治精英有关。最重要的是，我认为，纳入一家私营公司并没有从根本上改变天然气出口租金再分配到国内的规则：一旦私营诺瓦泰克获得天然气出口，有迹象表明，它也需要以类似的方式参与国内租金的再分配，国有公司，如俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司，即，发挥社会经济作用，例如为破产的国内消费者提供服务。

In 2013, the gas export monopoly of the Russian majority state-owned gas company, Gazprom, was broken. Two more companies - the majority state-owned Rosneft and private Novatek - were granted access to Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) exports. Nevertheless, despite pressure from domestic actors, Gazprom remained the sole exporter of Russian gas via pipelines. The first question that this dissertation addresses is: what explains the persistence of the single-actor model of pipeline gas exports led by Gazprom? The second question is: why did Russia break Gazprom's monopoly on LNG exports in 2013? The third question is two-fold: why did access to LNG exports opened to two NGPs only and how did the inclusion of a private Russian gas company, Novatek, in the country's gas sector organisation fit within the overall Russian political-economic environment of the 2010s? I rely on data from secondary research and ten expert interviews. I use a single case research design complemented by explaining-outcome process tracing to analyse the findings through a novel conceptual framework in a single coherent narrative.While most of the works that look at Russia's gas strategy take the perspective of Russia's external gas consumers, I shift the viewpoint to the domestic level. I suggest that resource-rich countries are prone to creating limited access orders (LAOs), as described by North et al. (2009), namely: they create institutional environments that limit the access to rents and privileges to a dominant coalition consisting of political and economic elites. I argue that external shocks affect the relative power of the actors in a given energy or resource sector and trigger shifts in the institutions that distribute access to rent-generating activities (e.g., gas exports) to reflect the interests of those actors whose power has grown. However, I argue that changes in the distributive institutions are constrained by industry and country-specific infrastructural and technological lock-ins. These lock-ins reduce the incentives for reforms and, thus, perpetuate some aspects of the industrial organisation over time. This causal logic was confirmed by the empirical findings. I showed that the inclusion of other actors besides Gazprom in Russia's gas export strategy was a result of a readjustment in the distributive institutions of access to gas export rents generation that reflected a decrease in the relative bargaining power of Gazprom and an increase of that of Rosneft and Novatek. I demonstrate that these institutional adjustments affected only areas outside the sector's infrastructural lock-ins, namely: the LNG that was not physically constrained by the single domestic and export gas pipeline supply channel created during the initial development of the gas sector. Furthermore, access to gas exports remained limited, as members of Rosneft's and Novatek's higher management were associated with the ruling elite. Above all, I argued that the inclusion of a private company did not fundamentally change the rules of gas export rent redistribution to domestically: once the private Novatek gained access to gas exports, indications emerged suggesting that it was required to also participate in the domestic redistribution of rents in a similar way in which a state-owned company, such as Gazprom would, i.e., taking up socio-economic roles, such as supplying insolvent domestic consumers.