Dudley: BP committed to Russian joint venture
Oil major BP remains committed to its Russian joint venture TNK-BP, chief executive Bob Dudley has said.
Dudley also said that BP was looking at cooperation with state-controlled oil major Rosneft outside Russia, after the co-owners of TNK-BP blocked a deal to search for oil in the Russian Arctic and do a $16bn (£9.9bn) share swap.
“We remain fully committed to the TNK-BP joint venture and its future success,” Dudley said on the fringes of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
He added: “We have a joint venture with Rosneft in Germany so we may look at some other things internationally with Rosneft.”
The BP-Rosneft deal collapsed after the quartet of Soviet-born billionaires who own half of TNK-BP blocked it in the courts and turned down a $32bn offer to buy them out.
Rosneft has become a partner in the German Ruehr Oel refining venture after buying out Venezuela’s PdVSA.
Dudley said, however, that there was “no news, there’s no active discussions going on.”