Energy Blast – June 12, 2008

TNK-BP is suffering further difficulties, with its Russian oligarch partners threatening to sue BP in a Stockholm arbitration court in a bid to try and gain greater control over the venture. One UK newspaper says the struggle for control of TNK-BP matters “because the BP affiliate controls Samotlor, a big Russian oilfield, and the joint venture pumps about 1.6 million barrels per day, a big proportion of the 9.5 million bpd that Russia contributes to [the UK’s] daily global diet of crude.” The Times is running a profile of TNK’s “four oligarch shareholders”. The FT has interviewed Mikhail Fridman, “the baby-faced Russian tycoon on the warpath.” The head of BP, speaking in London, said that the world is not running out of oil, and The Economist has responded. A new BP report says global oil production fell last year for the first time in six years. The Bush administration are trying to reassure lawmakers who fear that a US-Russian deal on civil nuclear power could undermine efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. Vigorous demand and relatively slow growth in supply have sparked more diesel shortages across China, says PetroChina. Petrobras offers a rough sketch of how the company intends to develop vast new discoveries in the Atlantic Ocean.