guardian.co.uk,
Terry Macalister, Thursday 19 April 2012
TNK-BP offices in Moscow. Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images |
BP has
stepped into a new row over oil spills – this time in Russia – less than 24
hours after announcing it was going to pay out $8bn in America for polluting
beaches with the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
Shares in
TNK-BP, the Russian joint venture, slumped 5% after a meeting chaired by
Vladimir Putin heard how legal action seeking damages was being prepared over
leaks from pipelines into the Ob and Yenisei rivers. Natural resources and
ecology minister Yuri Trutnev, whose ministry has a track record of
successfully stripping companies such as Shell of their assets over ecological
misdeeds, told Putin he was planning to go to court.
"I
ordered Rosprirodnadzor [the environmental regulator] to prepare a lawsuit to
seek damages and offered the company to lay out a plan on overhauling their
pipeline system," he said, according to the meeting transcripts published
on the government website on Thursday. "Please, act in line with the
law," Putin was reported to have said in response.
TNK-BP
denied it was suffering any self-inflicted environmental problems and said it
had long been implementing a comprehensive programme for improving and modernising
its pipeline infrastructure.
"The
company has also undertaken a programme for remediation of legacy lands
contaminated in the Soviet period when hydrocarbons were produced without due
regard to environmental protection," it said in a statement.
But while
some industry watchers said BP could be caught up in political manoeuvring in
the Kremlin, the company will be aware of the problems that hit Shell in 2006.
The Anglo-Dutch oil group was accused of breaking various environmental laws at
the Sakhalin-2 gas project and was then forced to sell down its 55% stake to
state-owned Gazprom in what was seen as a display of resource nationalism.
BP has in
the past tangled with Rosprirodnadzor and at one stage two years ago faced
having its operating licence revoked on the Kovykta field in Eastern Siberia.
But BP has
more recently has been fighting its own Russian partners inside TNK after they
objected to the British company trying to tie up an independent share swap and
Arctic exploration deal with a second Russian company, Rosneft. The deal fell
through and BP has had its place taken by ExxonMobil, but the TNK shareholders
are variously trying to take legal action against BP for alleged breach of the
shareholder agreement and other issues.
The wider
climate surrounding international oil companies has got worse as a result of
increased resource nationalism and tougher action triggered by the Macondo
blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
Argentina
has become the latest country to try to seize assets. Earlier this week the
government in Buenos Aires announced plans to renationalise the YPF company
controlled by Repsol of Spain.
At the same
time Chevron of the US and its rig owner Transocean have been charged with
environmental crimes related to a November oil spill at the Frade field off
Brazil.
A drilling
accident caused an estimated 2,400 to 3,000 barrels of oil to seep from cracks
in the seabed but a prosecutor has already confiscated the passports of 17
staff and threatened fines totalling $11bn.
Related Articles:
US Scientists: Fish Sick Where BP's Oil Spill Hit
Chevron faces $10.6bn Brazil legal suit over oil spill
US Scientists: Fish Sick Where BP's Oil Spill Hit
Chevron faces $10.6bn Brazil legal suit over oil spill
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.