Where would Russia’s energy sector be without the ongoing saga that is TNK-BP?  In terms of mystery plot-lines and baffling events, the joint venture is by far the most fascinating player on the stage.  When the row over the Rosneft-BP share tie-up first hit the news, it was widely thought that Alfa-Access-Renova, the stubborn shareholders comprising the Russian half of TNK-BP, were stalling the deal in order to get a hefty buy-out offer.  And now they have: $27 billion in cash worth.  Are they interested?  Not a bit.

Stan Polovets, AAR’s chief executive, says the group’s TNK-BP investment is ‘long-term‘ and ‘strategic‘, and that it has ‘no plans to exit‘.  It can’t have helped, either, that Bob Dudley made it sound as though BP’s offer was a form of hardball, the minimum that they were prepared to offer rather than a generous price: Reuters quotes him as having said, ‘We are not going to offer large amounts or significant shareholdings in BP.‘