Silly auction

28 March 2007 By Fiona Maharg-Bravo

The RussoBritish venture pulled out of the auction for a 10% Rosneft stake. It’s excuse that it was hard up looks plain ridiculous. But TNKBP may not mind that. It had other motives for bidding than the desire to buy anything.

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BP's Russia venture TNKBP dropped out of an auction for a 9.44% stake in Rosneft less than ten minutes into the proceedings. It bowed out of the bidding after the price reached just $90m above the $7.5bn starting price. The auction was the first in a series of assets belonging to bankrupt oil major Yukos.

TNKBP said it was disappointed by the auction. Its spokesman told the Financial Times: This was $100m above the start price. This is a lot of money to us. We would have to sell 3bn litres of petrol in the UK to make $100m.

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