Oil, who promotes the synergy between France and Russia

The ties between France and Russia are getting closer and closer, ties that are not always known and known to the international press agencies. And there is no doubt that it is the oil industries that cement the synergy between France and Russia.

French politician François Fillon will meet Alexei Miller, CEO of Gazprom when he travels to Moscow on 6 October. Fillon will be accompanied by Gilles Remy, the head of the corporate diplomacy firm Cifal, who organized Fillon's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in early March.

The former prime minister will attend his first board meeting of the Russian public oil company Zarubezhneft the day after. Fillon joined the council on July 3 following a government decree from Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

Zarubezhneft's board of directors has been led since 2016 by Evgueni Murov, a former KGB officer specializing in foreign intelligence and counterintelligence. Murov was deputy director of the FSB in St. Petersburg in 1997-1998, managing for the next 16 years the FSB, which protects prominent personalities and government officials. It also includes former Armenian Prime Minister and former Gazprom Vice President Karen Karapetian; the economist Pavel Kadoshnikov; Pavel Sorokin, the analyst and former auditor of EY who was deputy minister of energy; lawyer and senior official Alexei Pavlov; state councilor Vladimir Furgalski; and, last but not least, Zarubezhnef's chief executive, Sergey Kudriachov, an oil executive who had previously been with Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos and Rosneft.

Eager to expand his already large circle of contacts in Moscow, Fillon could also use the trip to secure new contracts for his Paris-based business consulting firm Apteras which was registered in 2017 at the Parisian address of the law firm Dechert. Interested in French defense markets, the venture capital firm separated the company from Fillon due to its Russian connections last year.

While the main business of the Russian oil company Zarubezhneft is in Vietnam, where its joint venture Vietsovpetro was founded in 1981 in collaboration with the national oil company Petrovietnam, and its work in Nenetsia in the Arctic, has also branched out into other parts of the world in recent years.

Zarubezhneft is engaged in oil and gas exploration in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cuba, and is also prospecting in Africa, particularly Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon and Algeria.