Feared Putin lieutenant making major of Rosneft

Monday, July 30, 2012 - Moscow—The man regarded as President Vladimir Putin’s most mighty lieutenant may now be just three months away from cobbling together the world’s biggest publicly-traded oil company for the Russian state.

The last piece of the puzzle for Igor Sechin—Rosneft chief and long-time surveyor of Russia’s globe-topping energy sector—would be clinching a deal to acquire British group BP’s troubled half of its TNK-BP venture in Siberia.

But some see the rapid rise of Rosneft as part of a mad scramble in Russia by both the state and private players to pool resources as they seek to replace dwindling Soviet-era field output with the promise of untapped Arctic oil. This consolidation “is based on the need to substitute inexpensive onshore oil and gas sites with far more expensive ones located offshore and in other remote locations,” said Renaissance Capital analyst Ildar Davletshin. The unquestioned leader and instigator of this drive is Sechin—a quiet man with a past in Portuguese-speaking Africa that some link to Soviet military intelligence.—AFP