Moscow, 1 July: The Russian shareholders of TNK-BP (oil company) (AAR consortium - Alfa Group, Access Industries and Renova) have no objections to foreign specialists working for TNK-BP. (British BP and AAR own 50 per cent of TNK-BP each.)

According to a statement by AAR, which quotes the head of the consortium Stan Polovets, AAR "at the same time insists that they should be employees of TNK-BP and not of BP, work not only in Moscow but also in the locations of the key local divisions of the company where oil of TNK-BP is being produced and refined".

Polovets also noted that foreign managers and technical specialists had been making and would continue to make a significant contribution to the development of TNK-BP as well as the fact that prior to the merger with BP, the TNK company had been a leader in the Russian oil industry in terms of the number of foreign specialists.

"In any country the state retains the right to decide on the number of foreign workers. For this, there are official quotas and concrete procedures, where the employer must not only submit a list of foreign employees it brings in but to convincingly demonstrate that it cannot find proper substitutes for them on the domestic market. In Russia there are enough talented and experienced engineers and managers. In our work we want to make an accent on further improvement of the qualification of Russian specialists, in particular. This approach is fully in agreement with the position of the government of the Russian Federation, which has noted more than once that the country needs foreign investors who would help Russian companies to develop and this is impossible without investing in Russian personnel. Increasing the level of qualification of Russian personnel of TNK-BP is the main component of our personnel policy. Therefore we are calling on our colleagues from BP to take seriously the issue of replacing foreign specialists with Russian professionals in a planned manner," Polovets stressed.

"The issue of work permits and visas has nothing to do with the AAR establishing control over TNK-BP, which is what, according to BP statements, the Russian shareholders are striving for," Polovets said. "The heart of the matter is that we, as the owners of a 50-per-cent stake, want to optimize the expenditure, sensibly approach the use of expensive foreign specialists and develop TNK-BP as an independent oil company. In other Russian oil companies the number of foreign managers and technical specialists is significantly lower than in the TNK-BP. For example, in LUKoil, where 20 per cent of the shares belon to ConocoPhillips, there is a very small group of foreign employees while LUKoil is present on the markets of nearly all continents of the world".

"The AAR consortium thinks that the situation with foreign specialists in TNK-BP is completely devoid of drama because the permission received by the company earlier for bringing in foreign workforce extends to all key positions, including the president, vice-president, directors of departments and other top managers," the statement by the AAR said. (Passage omitted: background).