Chechen guerrillas attacked a natural gas pipeline in southern Russian (Dagestan) on Wednesday. 21 people were injured in the secondary explosions. The pipeline has been attacked three times since 1996 by Chechen insurgents. This incident demands close scrutiny due to the extreme vulnerability of the Russian oil and gas pipeline system (Transneft). An aggressive, continuous global guerrilla assault on Transneft's assets would bring Russia to its knees financially and would place control of the price of energy in the hands of anti-state forces (see A Shadow OPEC for more). Russia is not only the second largest oil producer in the world, it also contains the world's largest proven reserves of natural gas.