MOSCOW-British oil gi­ant BP said yes­ter­day it is con­sid­er­ing sell­ing its 50 per cent stake in its Russ­ian joint ven­ture TNK-BP, in a deal that could fetch at least US$15 bil­lion. TNK-BP, Rus­sia's third-largest oil pro­duc­er, is a joint ven­ture be­tween BP and AAR, a con­sor­tium of Russ­ian bil­lion­aire share­hold­ers. The com­pa­ny has been mired in a cor­po­rate dis­pute af­ter AAR blocked BP's deal with an­oth­er Russ­ian oil com­pa­ny, Ros­neft.

BP said in a state­ment that it has re­ceived "un­so­licit­ed in­di­ca­tions of in­ter­est" for its share in TNK-BP and is look­ing to pur­sue a po­ten­tial sale which is "con­sis­tent with BP's com­mit­ment to max­imis­ing share­hold­er val­ue." TNK-BP rep­re­sents 27 per cent of BP's re­serves and 29 per cent of its pro­duc­tion, ac­cord­ing to the British com­pa­ny's lat­est an­nu­al re­port.

BP's spokesman in Rus­sia, Vladimir Buyanov, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that the in­for­ma­tion about the po­ten­tial buy­er is con­fi­den­tial. He de­clined to spec­i­fy whether the of­fer might have come from the Russ­ian share­hold­ers. Buyanov said the share­hold­ers' agree­ment be­tween BP and AAR re­quires both par­ties to no­ti­fy the oth­er of of­fers to ac­quire their hold­ings.

BP's 50 per cent stake in the Russ­ian oil pro­duc­er could fetch more than US$15 bil­lion as TNK-BP's mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion, based on its share prices at the Russ­ian MICEX stock ex­change, hov­ered around US$31.5 bil­lion Fri­day af­ter­noon. But in Moscow TNK-BP's shares at the MICEX slumped by 6 per cent in af­ter­noon trad­ing.

BP, how­ev­er, stressed that "there can be no guar­an­tee that any trans­ac­tion will take place." BP's an­nounce­ment was wel­comed by in­vestors in Lon­don, who bid up the shares in the com­pa­ny by 1.57 per cent to 401.1 pence in morn­ing trad­ing. AAR has pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that it could be in­ter­est­ed in rais­ing its stake in TNK-BP. AAR's spokesman in Moscow de­clined to com­ment any as­pect of BP's an­nounce­ment. TNK-BP's CEO Mikhail Frid­man, one of the mem­bers of AAR, un­ex­pect­ed­ly stepped down on Mon­day.

In an in­ter­view with the Russ­ian dai­ly Kom­m­er­sant he cit­ed ten­sions be­tween the share­hold­ers as a rea­son for his de­par­ture and said the par­i­ty own­er­ship of TNK-BP no longer works. Frid­man said in the in­ter­view that AAR could be in­ter­est­ed in in­creas­ing its stake, but it would al­so con­sid­er sell­ing some of its stake in ex­change for BP shares.

Al­though one of Rus­sia's most lu­cra­tive oil as­sets, TNK-BP has been mired in board­room dis­putes for most of its nine-year his­to­ry. At the height of the pre­vi­ous share­hold­er con­flict in 2008, TNK-BP's CEO Robert Dud­ley left Rus­sia com­plain­ing of what he de­scribed as a cam­paign of "ha­rass­ment." Frid­man's ap­point­ment as in­ter­im CEO in 2009 and a new share­hold­er agree­ment helped rec­on­cile the two ri­val groups of share­hold­ers.

But ten­sions resur­faced last year when AAR blocked a po­ten­tial­ly huge agree­ment be­tween BP and Russ­ian state-owned oil com­pa­ny Ros­neft. TNK-BP's Russ­ian share­hold­ers claimed that such a deal should be pur­sued through the joint ven­ture. Jonathan Jack­son, head of eq­ui­ties at Lon­don-based Kil­lik & Co., said it was dif­fi­cult to put a price on BP's stake.

"At the time of the Ros­neft/Arc­tic deal, BP is be­lieved to have made a cash and joint of­fer (with Ros­neft) of US$27 bil­lion for its 50 per cent stake. How­ev­er, AAR ap­pears to have de­mand­ed US$35 bil­lion, and al­so asked for a 10 per cent stake in BP and Ros­neft, as well as cash," he said.