New York Times newspaper wrote yesterday that the US administration considers possibility of application of sanctions against Igor Sechin, President of the state-run Rosneft company. If he is listed in SDN, his assets in the US will be frozen and his entry to the US will be banned. Sechin’s business contacts with the western partners of Rosneft, including the US ExxonMobil, will be under threat. The US ExxonMobil and Rosneft have been implementing numerous projects in Siberia, Arctic , Black Sea, Canada and US.
ExxonMobil’s lawyers study the potential consequences of the sanctions against Sechin, writes New York Times. If the US sanctions are applied against Sechin personally, then Rosneft company should have no problems. But the damage could be caused to the company’s image. “If Sechin is banned, then it would be more difficult to the western companies to do business with Rosneft. Nobody would want to have relationships with the person, against whom the US sanctions have been applied,” said Anders Aslund, Russian specialist from the Peterson International Economy Institute.
BP could be also concerned about the sanctions against Sechin, because it owns almost 20% of Rosneft. But BP Executive Director Bob Dudley said the western sanctions have not affected the British company. He called BP’s investments into Rosneft a “reinforced concrete.” “Our business takes it normal course,” Dudley told journalists in Moscow. While the EU and US have been working on the new sanctions against Russia, BP takes part at the session of the Russian Geographic Society. Russian President Vladimir Putin personally controls the Society and Dudley is one of its few foreign guardians.
