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...business has never been for the faint of heart. But think back, if you will, some five years to a time when the industry was nothing like it is today. In mid-2003, when a barrel of oil fetched about $30, BP made what was then the largest ever foreign investment in a Russian firm. The British company paid more than $6 billion for a 50% stake in TNK-BP, an oil outfit it set up with a consortium of four Russian billionaires. Vladimir Putin, Russia's President at the time, joined Tony Blair, then Britain's Prime Minister...
This deal, which created Russia's third-largest oil firm, still has the leaders of both countries talking. But their tone has changed. When current U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown brought up TNK-BP with Dmitri Medvedev, Putin's successor, on the sidelines of the G-8 summit on July 7, the uneasy discussion was of a breakdown in relations between the British and Russian partners. Meanwhile, Dudley, the company's BP-appointed boss, is battling to keep his job. In Moscow that same day, AAR, the Russian consortium that controls 50% of TNK-BP, called for his dismissal, claiming...
Publicly, AAR's list of grievances is long. It claims, among other things, that TNK-BP operates too much like a BP subsidiary, resisting expansion beyond Russia to avoid stepping on the British firm's toes. Instead, the Russians want an independent CEO, and a culling of BP staff seconded to the Russian venture. AAR, led by Mikhail Fridman, TNK-BP's chairman, has even threatened legal action after its calls for more influence came to nothing...
...OPEC's." But asked what the OPEC was investing to secure future demand, Khelil responded by suggesting his organization was being unfairly targeted. "What are other countries doing? Why don't you ask Brazil? Why don't you ask China? Those aren't OPEC countries," he said. Meanwhile, BP's Hayward blamed high taxes for stymieing necessary investment...
...that reality that led the solar arm of BP to pull out of the thin-film industry in 2002, claiming that the economics would never add up. But the numbers have changed, thanks largely to the enormous success of Phoenix's First Solar. Though the company was launched in 1999, it has its origins in a solar start-up that had been around since the mid-1980s. First Solar spent years tinkering before moving to mass production. It was able to weather those early days of profitless experimentation because it had a rich, patient backer: Wal-Mart heir John Walton...