MOSCOW —Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft strengthened its hold on the country’s lucrative oil industry when it sealed a deal Monday to buy TNK-BP, the 50-50 joint venture between BP, the British energy company, and a group of Russian oil oligarchs.
The deal will allow Rosneft, the country’s top oil producer, to increase its global profile. The new combined company will leapfrog Exxon Mobil Corp. to become the world’s largest publicly traded producer of oil and gas in terms of output. Exxon Mobil’s latest earnings show its daily output at 4.2 million barrels of oil, below the expanded Rosneft’s projected 4.6 million.
As part of the deal, BP succeeds in unloading its stake in a troublesome joint venture. In return, it gets $17.1 billion in cash from Rosneft and a 12.84 percent stake in Russia’s biggest oil company. The British company is also planning to use some of the money to raise its stake in Rosneft to 19.75 percent. BP will also get two seats on the Russian company’s nine-member board.
Rosneft also said it had agreed to buy the other 50 percent in the joint venture from AAR for $28 billion and that the deal was “entirely independent of the transaction with BP.”
