Some lawyers know the law: some know the judge ...

Well, someone on Team Trump knows their game: gotta love the symbolism of meeting in Alaska!  Yup, Li'l Volodya / L'il Volodymyr, it's real estate.  Sometimes you wish a former territory was still yours - but sometimes that's just history and we all move on.  Great stuff.

While we await the ghastly prospect of Trump and Putin sitting around the map of Ukraine drawing arbitrary lines (and Putin wetting himself with pleasure at meeting the Great Man again), here's the story I promised you'd get.

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Many years ago I was working for (*gasp*) an oil & gas company, and had planning responsibility for our ops in a certain African country.  A plum piece of offshore acreage was up for grabs and we wanted it: but another company had a rather more compelling claim.  The acreage was contiguous with a play they'd been working very productively for several years, and their geo-data strongly suggested the oilfield they were producing extended into the new block.  It is technically possible for business to be conducted effectively by two separate developers accessing a single field that straddles a licence-line - you need to negotiate a "unitisation" agreement - but it's messy, not least in primitive jurisdictions (are you allowed to say that? - Ed).  So the incumbent was strongly motivated to pitch hard for the new acreage.  We had some neighbouring acreage, too, which thus far had not yielded any discoveries.  But we weren't deterred: the prize was great.

The minister, replete with tribal hat and fly-whisk, decreed that he would make his determination at the end of a grand meeting where he'd hear each side make its case.  Along came the incumbent with a slick slide-show of all their geo-data: a fine technical presentation that was pretty persuasive - judged on its own terms.

But our chief geologist was a canny Frenchman (Basque, actually - we'll call him Vasco), and this was a Francophone country.  When the incumbent's team had finished their polished performance, he strode up to the table with a large map that he unrolled theatrically and plonked down several paperweights to hold it flat.  It was a simple map of the seabed, with few markings: the lines of the various licence areas; and seabed contours.

Now seabed contours don't have very much to do with what lies thousands of feet beneath (OK: nothing whatsoever).  But they made the plot that was up for grabs look a lot more natural a fit with our existing area, than with the incumbents.  Our man's presentation was short and simple, and he concluded it with a grand, sweeping gallic hand-gesture across the map, indicating the perfect logic of his contour-based argument.  Then he sat down.

The minister pondered all things in his heart, and then rose to the table.  He addressed the assembled host with these words:

Moi, je comprends l'argument de Monsieur Vasco

With this, he grandly replicated the sweeping gesture across the map; turned on his heel; and awarded us the licence.

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I think we can guess what Putin's maps are going to look like.  Heaven help Zelensky on 15th.

ND