By Amelie Herenstein
AFP: MOSCOW
Petroleumworld.com 06 25 07
The planned sale of a Siberian gas field by Britain’s BP to Gazprom is only the latest twist in a Kremlin campaign to reassert control over Russia’s vast energy resources, analysts said Friday.
Friday’s announcement of a preliminary agreement on the sale by Gazprom and BP executives came after months of Russian government threats to revoke the licence on the Kovykta field for not meeting production timetables.
The deal carried echoes of a similar agreement last December in which a consortium of foreign energy majors led by British-Dutch giant Shell sold a majority stake in the vast Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project to Gazprom.