A swap deal of the Russian oil company Rosneft and British BP signed on Friday for the Russian Arctic shelf has given rise to environmental worries as the British oil giant has not yet fully resolved the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Such opinion was expressed by the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, BBC News reported.
The former secretary of energy and climate change said, speaking on a BBC's show, that after the worst ecological catastrophe in the Gulf “the task for all of us… is not to just keep digging and digging deeper and deeper for oil” but “to find those alternative forms of energy that can help us move forward in a clean way," BBC quoted Mr. Miliband as saying.
Earlier, the deal has drawn criticism of Edward Markey, the Democratic Party representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, who is also the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, called for a thorough analysis of the agreement if “this agreement affects the national and economic security of the United States”.
“Additionally, the U.S. State Department should closely monitor this transaction,” the Mr. Markey’s press release said.
BP and Rosneft will create a JV to exploit potentially huge oil and gas deposits in Russia's Arctic continental shelf, in which 67% of shares will be owned by Rosneft and 33% - by BP. In addition, Rosneft will take 5% of ordinary voting shares in BP in exchange for 9.5% shares of Rosneft, the BBC report said.