North West Oil Group, Inc. (NWOL)

[davewashdc]

I have an older brother who has lived in moscow for the last 15 years. I have a daughter living there also within a young russian family to learn the language in her pursuit of linguistics. I have only visited there once, but may get back there again this year.

If you think anything in the russian business world, particularly the oil sector, is a sure thing I need to hear more about that DD you say that you performed.

The place is only a partial democracy, xenophobic in ways that americans cannot begin understand (the kremlin is a fort with walls firmly facing in all directions), and becoming more of an oligarchy than leaning towards a strictly capitalist economic model.

My brother has participated as a partner and owner in four moscow businesses, all successful. He has demonstrated that the opportunity for rapid wealth creation exists there, but "they will rob you blind in a nanosecond", and the regulatory/law structure is weak at best. (For example, he has since around thet time of the attack on the parliament building paid monthly protection money to one of the more prominant "crime families" in the moscow area for "security services": With a quick phone call he will have "two cars with several men in each carrying uzzis show up within a few minutes to his place of business.)

No, in Russia this cannot be a sure thing, not based the presumptions I have (about internal political connectedness) and the information that appears to be publically available so far.

However, I do hope that you succeed in your investment objectives. That means I will probably have met mine also.