Rosneft accounts for around half of BP's oil and gas reserves and a third of its production and divesting the 19.75 per cent stake will result in charges of up to US$25 billion, the British company said, without saying how it plans to extricate itself.
It also underscores growing pressure from Western governments on their companies to curtail operations in Russia as they widen a net of economic sanctions against Moscow. Rosneft blamed BP's decision on"unprecedented political pressure", Russian news agencies reported, saying 30 years of successful cooperation had been ruined.
Earlier, Putin put Russia's nuclear deterrent on high alert in the face of Western reprisals for his invasion of Ukraine, which included blocking access to the SWIFT international payment system for some Russian banks. Looney and his predecessor as CEO Bob Dudley will both step down from the board of Rosneft, which BP acquired a shareholding in as part of its US$12.5 billion TNK-BP stake sale in 2013.
BP received revenue from Rosneft in the form of dividends which totalled around US$640 million in 2021, roughly 3 per cent of its overall cash flow from operations.