Black gold

This is our train pulled up for a half-hour stop at Agryz, a town near Tyumen, which is the heart of the west-Siberian oilfield. (TNK, as in TNK-BP, stands for Tyumen Oil Company, as translated). It is perhaps clear why oil is so important to the Russian economy, especially when small and medium-sized enterprises are largely prevented from flourishing due to corruption, bureaucratic and legal uncertainty and and other administrative (not human) problems.