The AAR consortium of Russian shareholders in TNK-BP will agree only to a parity 50/50 joint venture format with state-run oil major Rosneft, if it buys BP’s stake in the joint venture, a Russian shareholder said on Wednesday.
BP currently holds a 50 percent stake in the venture, along with AAR, a group of four Russian billionaires. BP said last week it wanted to sell its stake, with market participants estimating the value of the stake as high as $32 billion. Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, announced on Tuesday it would commence talks with BP to purchase the British oil major’s stake in TNK-BP.
The emergence of a new shareholder in TNK-BP on a 50/50 basis will not complicate the JV’s current operations, the unnamed shareholder said.
“I do not see big problems, if BP decides to sell its stake to Rosneft. They have much synergy with Rosneft,” he said, adding no other format but a parity basis was possible.
The Russian TNK-BP shareholder also said there was nothing bad about Rosneft joining TNK-BP and this deal would only boost the JV’s capitalization.
Rosneft said in a statement on Tuesday it expected a “considerable synergy effect” in geological prospecting and oil production in Eastern Siberia, gas sector development and better oil and oil products logistics from a possible purchase of the stake in TNK-BP.
BP and AAR have been locked in a long-running dispute over management of their Russian joint venture, which resulted in the replacement of the former TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley in 2008. Dudley has subsequently become head of BP.
Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, one of the AAR partners, resigned as TNK-BP’s CEO in late May due to what he called a collapse of corporate management.