Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP may participate in projects to develop the Arctic shelf if it offers good terms to the country's energy giants Rosneft and Gazprom, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said late on Friday.
BP agreed in January to pay more than $8 billion in shares for a 9.5% stake in Rosneft and a deal to develop the oil reserves of the Kara Sea on the Arctic shelf.
The companies agreed to develop three blocks in the Kara Sea known as East Prinovozemelsk-1, 2 and 3, whose overall reserves are estimated at 5 billion tons of oil and 10 trillion cubic meters of gas.
The four Russian shareholders who own half of TNK-BP argued that the deal violated a clause in the joint venture's shareholder agreement under which BP it was to agree all Russian deals with them. TNK-BP won an injunction in a London court that froze the deal and is now seeking to be part of the agreement. Earlier this week it said it wanted to replace BP in the share swap.
"There is a law, under which we have entrusted Rosneft and Gazprom with work on the shelf. If TNK-BP offers suitable terms of joint work to one of the companies, it can (join the project), why not," Putin told reporters.
Putin also said that the conflict between TNK-BP and BP was a corporate affair to be solved in court.
"BP says the clause is not absolute and universal, saying that they work, for instance, on Sakhalin without TNK and they hope to solve the conflict amicably or find a compromise," he said.
Putin said that neither company had informed Rosneft, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, of a possible conflict.
"These are their problems, they must solve them between themselves," he said.
BRYANSK, March 5 (RIA Novosti)
