Crude oil production at BP PLC's (BP) Russian joint venture TNK-BP (TNBP.RS) may suffer in the fourth quarter of this year and first quarter 2009, after 148 temporary specialists were forced to stay at home, the Vedomosti daily said Monday citing TNK-BP's Chief Executive Robert Dudley.
Some 148 foreign specialists, who were temporarily transferred to TNK-BP from BP, were forced to stay at home because of visa problems.
Last week, as the visa issue was resolved, a court in Siberia issued an injunction forcing BP to suspend the transferred employees from working again. The court order was initiated by a Moscow brokerage, ZAO Tetlis, which owns a small stake in a publicly traded unit of TNK-BP and alleged that the fees TNK-BP pays for the BP specialists amount to an illegal dividend for BP.
Recently, tensions have been flaring between BP and its Russian partners in what some observers believe could be an attempt by the latter to sell their stake to Russia's state-controlled gas company OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS).