UK oil firms cheating investors, says Russia

[phantom power]

Seems like there is lots of movement by Russia lately, in the 'resource consolidation' direction.

Backstory

BP and Shell are still reeling from the intervention in their Russian businesses of the environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor. The agency accused BP of not using its licence properly at the Kovkta field in eastern Siberia. BP earlier this year was forced to announce it had passed control over to state-owned Gazprom. Shell had a similar run-in over its Sakhalin-2 gas scheme in the far east of Russia. Rosprirodnadzor accused Shell and its Japanese partners of breaching their licence guidelines on Sakhalin by failing to look after the environment. Shell sold a controlling stake in the world's largest liquefied natural gas scheme to Gazprom and the attacks on the performance of the operating group has ceased. The Kremlin denies it is orchestrating these events, but does believe some foreign companies won unfair advantages in the past

(...)

Russia stepped up the pressure on British-listed energy and mining companies yesterday with an influential Moscow regulator alleging that some of them were "cheating" investors by exaggerating their reserves.

Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, called on the London Stock Exchange and other authorities in the UK to stamp out the alleged abuses.

His call comes at a time when the Kremlin has been taking back Russian assets from UK companies such as Shell and BP which it believes were obtained on the cheap when times were bad in Moscow.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2156785,00.html