MOSCOW - BP's Russian joint venture has been given three months to produce at one of the world's largest gas fields "by a technically impossible amount" or face losing the field altogether.
The order, from a local branch of Russia's environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, puts the Anglo-Russian oil groupTNK-BP in an impossible position that appears designed to force it to sell its controlling stake in the US$2 billion ($2.92 billion) Kovykta gas field.
The deadline is being seen as the latest shot in a Kremlin campaign to renationalise the country's "commanding heights" as Russia seeks to continue its controversial metamorphosis into an energy superpower.
It will also add to the heap of problems at BP, which is confronting a crisis in the US over its safety record.
BP indirectly owns a 62.42 per cent stake in the Kovykta gas field, a project that state-controlled Gazprom has been negotiating to enter for months.
The Anglo-Russian company (which is 50 per cent owned by BP) was warned that if it didn't raise production at the Siberian field from 33 million cu m per year to 9 billion cu m by May, it risked being stripped of its operating licence.
The field currently only accounts for just over 1 per cent of TNK-BP's production. Kovykta holds an estimated 1.9 trillion cu m of gas, giving it enormous future potential.
Nearby China, in particular, is keen to tap its rich reserves. Yet industry analysts say that even if it were possible to raise production at Kovykta to 9 billion cu m within three months, most of the gas would have to be flared off since demand in the surrounding Siberian region of Irkutsk is just a fraction of that figure and under Russian law TNK-BP is not allowed to export gas.
Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, was in Moscow recently to argue BP's corner in a charm offensive portrayed in the Russian media as a UK attempt to protect its national interests. However, his lobbying appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
That BP will be forced to sell off some kind of stake appears inevitable; the only question is what percentage of the project Gazprom will buy and at what price.
Shell faced similar pressure in the run-up to its painful decision to sell Gazprom a large stake in the Sakhalin-2 offshore oil and gas project and it is an open secret that BP is next on the Kremlin's apparent "hit list".
