BP facing legal action in Russia

A court in Russia said it agreed to a new hearing in a $13 billion case against British oil major BP for a shelved deal with Rosneft for work in arctic waters. A proposed January 2011 deal between BP and Rosneft for work in the arctic collapsed after TNK-BP, BP's joint venture in Russia, said the proposal violated terms of its shareholder agreement with BP. Rosneft later landed a similar deal with U.S. supermajor Exxon Mobil. A court in Siberia said it would open a new hearing into the case against BP, reports British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The original case was rejected during an appeals process but will now start over, the report adds. The relationship between BP and the Russian oligarchs behind the joint venture is strained. Bob Dudley, now chief executive officer at BP, left his office in Moscow in 2008 when he led TNK-BP. Mikhail Fridman resigned as the CEO of TNK-BP in May saying the structure of the joint venture had "run its course." BP last week put its $30 billion stake in the enterprise up for sale. Mikhail Rotaev, an analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, told Bloomberg News the sale would be "illogical" and run counter to "BP's strategic interests."