BP can thank Moscow for plenty of its jackpot profits
BP is just the latest major oil company to provoke political outrage after reporting its highest profits since 2013, fuelled by a year of record-breaking energy market prices that are adding to the UK cost of living crisis.
But the perception that BP has profiteered from the energy crisis has another dimension compared with similar accusations levelled against its peers.
The company’s decades-long ties to the Kremlin, and its stake in Russia’s state-backed oil firm Rosneft, has raised concerns that BP has benefited financially from its alliance with Russia even as western powers threaten sanctions in response to its actions on Ukraine’s border.
BP owns almost a fifth of Rosneft, reflecting the company’s deep, and at times troubling, legacy ties to Russia.
In BP’s latest set of annual results the state oil company contributed $2.7bn in underlying profit to BP’s bottom line last year, up from just $56m the year before, or just over 21% of its bumper $12.8bn profit for the year. BP is also continuing to benefit from Moscow’s political manoeuvres, which have helped to ramp up global energy prices in recent months.
Under the leadership of former BP boss Bob Dudley, the oil firm set up a joint venture, TNK-BP, alongside a string of Russian oligarchs in 2003. It was dissolved 10 years later to form Rosneft, but not before Dudley was forced to flee Moscow in 2008 after an “orchestrated campaign of harassment” by Russian state agencies.
BP has nonetheless retained a 19.75% stake in the business, which is now run by Igor Sechin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, as well as seats on the board.
This is despite a series of diplomatic rows between Moscow and the west in recent years and threats of economic sanctions, over a range of
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