BP still 'fully committed' to Russian joint venture

Oil giant BP remains committed to its Russian joint venture TNK-BP, according to its chief executive Bob Dudley.

He said that the company 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 $16 billion (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, adding: "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".