What BP’s new Russia deal means for investors

BP’s new deal with Russian oil giant Rosneft could give the company access to ‘a new North Sea’. But it also means that the controversy around the oil major is unlikely to fade any time soon. John Stepek looks at what the deal means for anyone thinking of buying BP shares.

When BP appointed an American, Bob Dudley, as their new chief executive, some might have thought that having a top man with a US accent would smooth things over with the States.

They were wrong. Mr Dudley has just unveiled a huge deal with a Russian partner which already has ruffled feathers in Congress.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.