CORRECTED: TNK-BP shareholders should go to court to settle dispute over Rosneft deal - Putin
(To correct the company's name in the headline of the news item issued at 9:50 p.m. Moscow time on March 4, 2010)
BRYANSK. March 4 (Interfax) - A dispute between the TNK-BP shareholders regarding BP's transaction with Rosneft regarding operations on Russia's offshore fields should be resolved in a court, said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
"This is the two companies' internal affair. They earlier concluded an agreement on joint operations," Putin told journalists on Friday evening.
TNK believes BP should seek its consent regarding any of its business activities on Russian territory and work together with it, while BP reasons that this rule should not be treated as absolute and points out that, for instance, it is operating on Sakhalin independently from TNK, Putin said.