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By Melissa Akin
MOSCOW, March 4 (Reuters) - BP, which lost its firstdeal to drill for oil in Russia's Arctic to ExxonMobil,tried to negotiate a new deal with Russian state oil companyRosneft and was again beaten to the punch by its U.S.rival.
ExxonMobil won access to the Arctic Laptev Sea fields, whereRosneft's prospective reserves amount to 36 billion barrels ofoil equivalent, under a deal last month, butthree industry sources said BP had also been in talks withRosneft to explore several blocks there.
Setbacks have become the norm for BP's activities in Russia,where it formed a joint venture, TNK-BP, in 2003, bypooling its assets with those of four Soviet-born billionaires.It is currently selling out of that troubled venture to Rosneft.
TNK-BP became a battle of wills between the British firm andthe tycoons, who blocked BP's first attempt to form an Arcticexploration deal with Rosneft, a deal that BP executives hadcompared to the opening of a new North Sea.
Having negotiated that venture, which the tycoons said wasin breach of the TNK-BP agreement, BP had to step aside andwatch ExxonMobil take the spoils in 2011.
Now Rosneft has preferred ExxonMobil for the Laptev fields,even though BP will become a significant shareholder of Rosneftin April and name two directors to its board as part of thetakeover of TNK-BP.
The government has even offered Dudley a seat on the boardat state controlled Rosneft, headed by Igor Sechin, aninfluential ally of President Vladimir Putin.
BP and Rosneft were unable to respond immediately to arequest for comment.
BP has been left a bystander as a rush for Arctic drillingdeals got under way. Italy's Eni and Norway's Statoil have also struck partnerships with Rosneft, tradingtechnology and capital for access to tens of billions of barrelsof prospective offshore Arctic reserves.
The $55 billion cash-and-share deal to sell TNK-BP toRosneft, freeing BP from its fractious partnership and making ita 20 percent shareholder in Rosneft, appeared to promise asecond shot at an exploration deal with Rosneft.
Sechin has said Rosneft would remain interested in upstreamprojects with the British major after the takeover, "which wewill develop with BP as a partner, not as a shareholder".
Now, out of nearly 30 Arctic licence areas held by Rosneft,all but five have been parcelled out in upstream joint ventureswith other companies, leaving slim pickings for BP.
The loss of the Laptev blocks to ExxonMobil, coupled withconcerns about BP's role in the integration of TNK-BP, promptedDudley to fly to Moscow in the middle of February, the sourcessaid.
"Dudley came to Moscow to try to salvage the situation," onesaid.
Another source said Dudley met Sechin, the architect ofRosneft's foreign upstream partnerships.
The loss of the Laptev Sea acreage is an indication of thedifficult path still ahead for Dudley, who as CEO of TNK-BP wasdriven out of Russia in a struggle for control of that venture.
INFLUENTIAL EXXON
Sechin himself, at pains to indicate that theconflict-ridden days of TNK-BP would end with the takeover, hassought to show Rosneft can work with Dudley, who was nominatedto its board by the government.
But in a sign of the differing roles for BP and ExxonMobilat Rosneft, Vedomosti daily reported on Monday that as a stateappointee, Dudley would have to vote by government directive onmajor issues, such as large deals and key appointments.
By contrast, ExxonMobil's top financial official, DonaldHumphreys, has been nominated as an independent and as such candecide for himself how to vote, Vedomosti said. The report couldnot be immediately confirmed.
More broadly, it is unclear what rights, if any, BP willhave in managing an expanded Rosneft, while a senior ExxonMobilexecutive, Zeljko Runje, was plucked from the Moscow office andmade a vice president at Rosneft at Sechin's behest.
Although a few senior managers with ties to BP remain atTNK-BP after a purge of Western executives in a 2008 conflictbetween BP and its local partners, Sechin is unlikely to movethem to Rosneft.
"He doesn't know any of them," one of the sources said.
ARCTIC ACCESS
Rosneft's sudden decision to expand its Arctic drillingventure with ExxonMobil may have been intended to protect itsown access to Arctic reserves.
It followed a media report citing a Ministry of NaturalResources presentation which suggested state companies'exploration plans were not aggressive enough.
The ministry, responsible for licensing access to mineralreserves, was lobbying to expand access to Russia's offshorefields to private companies over protests from Rosneft and stategas company Gazprom, which had held exclusive rights.
Sources close to BP argue it will have an indirect share ofRosneft's upstream ventures with rivals through its 20 percentholding in Rosneft once the buyout of BP and its partners isfinalised at the beginning of April.
