TNK-BP: a troubled history

Mikhail Fridman, the billionaire, has resigned as chief executive of Russia’s third-largest oil company TNK-BP, in an apparent escalation of the troubles between the partners in the venture. Here is a timeline of BP’s troubled history in Russia:

1997
BP paid $571m to buy a 10pc stake in Sidanko, then Russia’s fifth-largest oil company and part of the Unexim-MFK banking group controlled by oligarch Vladimir Potanin.

2003
BP established its $7 billion Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, the largest foreign investment in Russia, a result of the merger of Russian companies TNK, Sidanko and Onako with the majority of BP’s Russian oil assets. The company was 50pc owned by BP and 50pc owned by a group of Russia-connected investors: Alfa Group, Access Industries and Renova (AAR). TNK-BP also owned a 50pc interest in Slavneft, another large Russian oil company.

2005
TNK-BP liquidated Sidanko after merging it with other assets.

2006
Prosecutors in the Siberian town of Irkutsk demanded a local natural resources agency suspend TNK-BP’s licence for the Kovykta gas field on environmental grounds.

2007
TNK-BP agreed in 2007 to sell Kovykta to Gazprom for about $1 billion, but the deal collapsed due to disagreements on price.

2008
March – Russian police raided the offices of BP and TNK-BP in Moscow and questioned managers. There was speculation the Kremlin wanted one of its own companies, such as state gas monopoly Gazprom, to buy out the Russian billionaire shareholders in the venture and become partner to BP.

May – Court action by a local brokerage stopped TNK-BP from using key foreign specialist staff.

June – TNK-BP’s Russian shareholders threatened BP with legal action to strip BP-nominated directors of their powers in TNK-BP as the corporate conflict flared up.

July – Russia’s migration service said TNK-BP Chief Executive Robert Dudley could not work in Russia under his temporary visa.

August – Dudley left Russia blaming a campaign of harassment in a fight for control between BP and its partners.

December – CEO Dudley resigned, with Chief Operating Officer Tim Summers taking over as interim CEO.

2009
January – Shareholders finalised a deal under which BP ceded some influence to AAR in return for an end to hostilities.

November – Maxim Barsky nominated as the new chief of TNK-BP, but he left the company in October 2011 with Mikhail Fridman appointed as CEO till the end of 2013.

2010
The licence holder of the Kovykta gas field, majority owned by TNK-BP, was put up for sale at an auction at a starting price of $500m. Gazprom paid 22.3 billion roubles ($773m) for the rights to develop the field.

2011

January – BP and Rosneft agreed to a $16 billion share swap under which they planned to jointly explore for offshore oil and gas in the Russian Arctic.

May – The deal with Rosneft collapsed after BP’s Russian partners won an injunction in a court of arbitration.

August – Russian bailiffs raided BP’s Moscow office in connection with the lawsuit by TNK-BP’s minority shareholders over the BP-Rosneft deal.

November – A Russian court rejected the lawsuit.

2012

May – Fridman resigned as TNK-BP’s chief executive officer with an AAR source saying the consortium had lost trust in the British major as a partner.

This article originally ran in The Telegraph.