With 2 Big Deals Approaching, Rosneft Stands to Become a Global Oil Power

Russia appears poised to approve deals that would all but double the size of the state oil company Rosneft, bringing more than half of the country's oil industry under government control for the first time since the early 1990s and creating a new player on the world stage. At the heart of the maneuvering is the country's third-largest oil company, TNK-BP, which is a joint venture between the British oil giant BP and four Russian billionaires. Rosneft is negotiating to buy out one or both partners.

If both deals happen, Rosneft would become the world's largest publicly traded oil company in terms of crude-oil production, with the Russian government as the majority owner. However, the shift of BP's Russian operations from private to state hands is fraught with risks, both for the company and the Russian industry more broadly. For instance, Rosneft's expansion could tempt the Russian government to use it strategically, just as Aramco, the Saudi Arabian company, is used to influence oil prices

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