From the plethora of commentaries on the collapse of the BP-Rosneft deal, there’s an edifying piece from the Oil and the Glory which adumbrates the events leading up to the deal’s, and its ultimate failure:

The details were tantalizing — already the most active Big Oil company on the Russia patch, BP would double-down by forming a marriage-type arrangement with state-owned Rosneft. The two companies would swap a significant number of shares, and then explore the extravagantly rich oil fields of the Arctic. Tens of billions of barrels of oil were at stake, and at once BP seemed to be back in the game.