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Too bad J.R. is gone--he could have learned a thing or two Front Jack J. Gryberg. The 59-year-old president of Grynberg Petroleum Corp. of Denver has organized a $200 million oil exploration venture that brings together three experienced partners on both sides of the Alantic in search of crude beneath the little-known waters of the Caspian Sea. Along with all the risks and challanges that are a given in the oil business, the partnership must uphold an unshakeable commitment to a unique environment, verifying some rather questionable oil field findings, and determine with absolute certainty who in the former Soviet bloc owns the rights to the territory they're drilling in.
"We've got three people assessing the oil field right now," says Mr. Grynberg. "We're not wasting any time. Just because there's fighting in Moscow doesn't mean the rest of the world has to stand still."
Certainly not Mr. Grynberg. He's been on fast-forward ever since a search of public Soviet documents revealed a pontential 44,000-square-kilometer oil field in the Caspian Sea off of Russia--or, more specifically, Dagestan, known lately as a republic within a republic. Amid the details, the Russian-speaking speaking oil exectitive found that oil had been discovered but that production had never begun. The answer to the riddle: The waters were home to one of the Soviet's most valuable exports--the eggs produced by sturgeon, or caviar--and when the test drilling sprung several leaks, local fishermen apoplectic over the potential for pollution had enough muscle to beach the Soviet oil men permanently.
Their loss was Mr. Gryberg's opportunity. With the information in hand, he brought in an old friend, Roland C. Shaw, chairman of London's Premier Consolidated Oilfields PLC, which conveniently was involved in a huge BP oil field development project with one third of the investment spent on the environment. Mr. Grynberg promised the government...