8:48 PM
Wikipedia
WikiLeaks: BP boss Bob Dudley blamed new Rosneft partner Igor Sechin for' black' plot against him....
The chief executive of BP blamed his new business partner, the Russian deputy prime minister, for backing a “black” campaign that forced him to go on the run for his own protection, according to secret US government files.
Bob Dudley was ousted from his previous job as head of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, TNK-BP, after a boardroom coup in 2008, and decided to “move around” from country to country “as a precaution”, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
Leaked US papers show that Mr Dudley believed the man behind the “war” against him was Igor Sechin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and chairman of the state-owned energy company, Rosneft. BP recently agreed a deal with Rosneft and the two men will now have to work closely together.
Mr Sechin is regarded as the third man in the triumvirate at the heart of Russian power with the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, the president, Dmitry Medvedev. Mr Sechin has been likened to Darth Vader and described as “the scariest person on earth”.
On Jan 14, Mr Dudley and Mr Sechin jointly hailed the £6.3 billion deal between BP and Rosneft to explore an area of Russia’s Arctic about the size of the North Sea. Oil experts believe that BP has been effectively forced to return to Russia to look for new business ventures in light of American anger over the firm’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
American diplomatic cables, obtained by The Daily Telegraph fromWikiLeaks, uncover the history of deep mistrust between the key architects of BP’s latest Russian venture. The disclosures come at a critical time for the company, which announces its end-of-year results today amid growing controversy over the Rosneft deal.
During a meeting with the American ambassador in Moscow in July 2008, Mr Dudley claimed that the Kremlin was directly behind an oligarchs’ plot to remove him from BP’s operations in Russia.
The embassy’s record of the meeting states: “Dudley said he believes (although he admitted 'some people disagree’) that AAR [the group of oligarchs] is acting with direct cooperation from the GOR [Government of Russia], including from Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.
“He said he expected the situation to continue to worsen with more attacks directed at him personally and shared with us an outline (emailed to desk) of information he has received regarding a 'black PR’ campaign by AAR designed to put further pressure on him and on BP.”
The US embassy shared Mr Dudley’s belief that the Kremlin was backing the oligarchs’ attacks on BP.
At the height of the crisis, Mr Dudley, who is now global chief executive of BP, went into hiding. An email he sent to a colleague said he was “not in the UK (as reported by the press) and not in the US,” according to the files. “Dudley is going to continue to move around 'as a precaution’.”
Dispatches from the US embassy showed that Rosneft and BP’s Russian subsidiary did not have a favourable view of each other’s businesses when rumours circulated that the Kremlin wanted to buy out the Russian half of TNK-BP.
In December 2007, Rosneft’s chief executive told the US ambassador in Moscow that the Russian state-owned company had “no interest” in such a deal, claiming that TNK-BP’s “production efficiencies and assets” were “substantially inferior” to its own. In turn, BP executives told the US embassy that Gazprom, the Russian gas company, would make a “more reliable and predictable partner” than Rosneft.
Mr Dudley also blamed officials connected with Rosneft for hampering negotiations for a global collaboration between BP and Gazprom.
Last month, BP announced that its “historic” agreement with Rosneft would see the Russian firm take 5 per cent of BP’s shares in exchange for 9.5 per cent of Rosneft’s.
When the announcement was made, Mr Dudley said the deal underlined BP’s “long-term, strategic and deepening links with the world’s largest hydrocarbon-producing nation”. He added: “We are very pleased to be joining Russia’s leading oil company to jointly explore some of the most promising parts of the Russian Arctic.”
Mr Sechin, who participated in the deal-signing ceremony, said the plan was a “world class” project putting Russia at the forefront of the global energy industry.
He is thought to share Mr Putin’s background working for Soviet special services although no official record confirms this. The Russian press have characterised him as Darth Vader and the “scariest person on earth”.
A spokesman for Rosneft said the company would like to stress that “as recently signed agreements demonstrate, the relations between Igor Sechin and Bob Dudley are highly constructive and friendly”.
Posted in: Igor Sechin
0 comments:
Post a Comment