BP Russian Arctic venture blocked

Russian shareholders of TNK-BP say they have blocked BP’s Arctic exploration deal with state-owned Rosneft.

“We won,” said a spokesman for the oil joint venture’s Russian shareholders.

An arbitration panel in Sweden has seemingly agreed that the Arctic deal violated a previous agreement between them and BP when they set up TNK-BP.

BP signed the controversial new deal with Rosneft in January to exploit potentially huge deposits of oil and gas in Russia’s Arctic shelf.

But TNK-BP’s Russian shareholders claimed BP broke an agreement to inform them of any other Russian oil business deals.

Share swap

The “strategic global alliance” with Rosneft would have seen the UK and Russian firms exchange expertise in exploring the region.

As part of the deal, the pair had agreed that Rosneft would take 5% of BP’s shares in exchange for approximately 9.5% of Rosneft’s shares.

It is this share exchange that is said to have particularly upset TNK-BP’s Russian shareholders.

The Alfa-Access-Renova consortium, which represents the Russian shareholders, won a High Court injunction in London last month that put the BP-Rosneft deal on hold until the dispute could be resolved by arbitration.

It was hoped that the joint venture might be given a role in the Arctic exploration deal, but TNK-BP’s shareholders failed to agree on this.