Independent, The (London): OUTLOOK: Russian roulette

UNTIL RECENTLY, the name Sibir Energy may not have meant anything to the chief executive of BP, Lord Browne of Madingley. Indeed, why should it? Sibir is a tiny, Aim-listed stock, not so much an oil minnow, more of a flea compared to the elephant that is BP, Britain's most valuable company and the second biggest oil major in the world.

Nevertheless, the extraordinary story of Sibir cannot have escaped Lord Browne's notice. A year ago, it agreed a joint venture with Sibneft, the Russian oil company controlled by the owner of Chelsea football club, Roman Abramovich. Sibir's 45 per cent share of the joint venture was conservatively estimated at $75m. In April, it was notified by its Russian partner that its stake had mysteriously been diluted to 1 per cent. Why and by whom, no one quite seems to know. Sibir is clear about one thing, however, and that is that the dilution was illegal. It is now seeking restoration of its interest in the joint venture. Meanwhile, Sibir shares remain suspended.

No one is remotely suggesting that the same thing is about to happen to BP's rather bigger Russian joint venture TNK-BP, which is valued at some $14bn. Nevertheless, the first rumblings of discontent have begun to be heard from the three Russian oligarchs with whom BP struck the deal. They have made it plain they want the money which BP still owes them upfront and in cash, rather than in BP shares over the next three years.

Now it is reported that Russia's secret service is investigating TNK- BP on the grounds that its British chief executive has got his hands on state secrets in the shape of the joint venture's oil reserves.

It is an increasingly uncertain time to be an oligarch in Putin's Russia. The former chairman of the country's biggest oil company and once its richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, languishes in jail while his company Yukos falls apart.

According to some analyses, Mikhail Fridman, one of the oligarchs with whom BP is in bed, may be next to fall foul of the Kremlin. If so, that would leave the future of TNK-BP in the air. As Lord Browne observed when the deal was signed last summer: "In business, trust is never 100 per cent." Let's hope those words do not come back to haunt him.

m.harrison@independent.co.uk