Putin Should Heed This Russian's Warning on Oil

Oil prices follow cycles, and so does the thinking about the future of oil-producing countries. This week, Russian billionaire Petr Aven and two Moscow economists published an article dissecting what they call the "twilight of the petrostate" which echoes the concerns of the Saudi Arabian elite -- but also the conventional thinking of the late 1990s, when oil was also cheap.

Aven's byline on the article is not to be taken lightly. He made almost $2 billion when Alfa Group, in which he is a shareholder, sold its share of oil company TNK BP to state-owned Rosneft in 2013. Aven was also Russia's foreign trade minister in 1992, when Vladimir Putin was in charge of foreign trade at the St. Petersburg mayor's office, so the two men know each other well. Aven knows a lot about at least one petrostate -- and not the least important one, either: Russia vies with Saudi Arabia for the title of the world's biggest oil producer.