RusEnergy

Aug. 26, 2008 - Kommersant - The decay of the management team is going on in TNK-BP. Executive Vice President and Head of the Marketing, Sales and Refining Department Antony Considine has announced the resignation. The sources say off-the-record that a few nonresident vice presidents will pull out of the company after this top manager. TNK-BP announced yesterday the resignation of Antony Considine, executive vice president and head of the marketing, sales and refining department (downstream sector), who had been keeping the office since the company’s emergence in 2003. According to TNK-BP Vice President Peter Henshaw, Considine attributed his resignation to the desire to join family that left for Australia in late 2007 and to the fact that he no longer sees any chances to introduce anything new to the company’s development. The candidates to replace Considine in the office of the vice president for refining and in Slavneft BOD haven’t been determined yet, Henshaw specified. TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley, who left Russia in July and whom the court disqualified for two years, will nominate a new vice president and the BOD of TNK-BP Limited is to sanction the candidacy. Considine’s withdrawal is by far not the first resignation since the time when the conflict of holders (BP and AAR Consortium of Alfa Group, Access Industries and Renova) escalated there. A source close to TNK-BP said Considine wanted to leave long ago but he was persuaded to remain for another year in May. Spokesmen of TNK-BP and BP expressed their general regret for Considine’s resignation, specifying that the EBITDA of his division climbed from $900 million in the first year of work to $3 billion in 2007. In time of Considine, the company completed a number of projects related to rebuilding and acquisition of new facilities. The last big deal was the buyout of Magistral chain of petrol stations for $891 million, which BP calls the biggest acquisition of logistics and sales sector from 2000 (the purchase of Castrol). At the same time, one of the basic claims of AAR to the current pattern of TNK-BP’s operation was the relatively low amount invested in downstream. In AAR, they declined to comment on Considine yesterday.