Russian oligarchs take BP to court in Rosneft row

27th Jan 2011 13:11

BP's billionaire partners at Russian joint venture TNK-BP have filed an injunction to try and stop the British company's £10bn arctic exploration tie-up with Kremlin-backed Rosneft.The oligarchs are livid at being left out of the Rosneft share-swap that will open up potentially massive oil deposits to the UK firm and its new bedfellow.A hearing, scheduled for 1 February, will increase tensions between the powerful TNK men and Russia's political leaders. Igor Sechin, Russia's deputy prime minister, is chairman of Rosneft.BP's new American chief executive Robert Dudley will hope the Kremlin, soon to be BP's largest shareholder, can provide more protection now than they did in 2008 when the oligarchs ran him out of town in a row over a possible Gazprom buy-out. But analysts doubt legal action will be allowed to derail the deal given that Moscow is so heavily involved. Putin and Co will not let the bickering disrupt development of the Arctic, which data shows holds almost a third of the world's undiscovered gas and around 13% of undiscovered oil. The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that between 44 and 157 billion barrels of recoverable oil exist there.