Rosneft grows as supermajor status beckons

Its growth plan is aggressive, can Russia's state oil firm step out of the shadows to become a truly global player?

To understand the problem facing Russian state oil and gas firm Rosneft in its quest to become the world's next supermajor, consider the following: in June 2012, the combined value of Rosneft and its takeover target TNK-BP was $108 billion; a year later, when its management unveiled a plan to pay TNK-BP minority shareholders less for their stock than the March takeover price, that had fallen to $77bn.  With the $55bn acquisition of TNK-BP, a Russian joint venture between BP and a group of Russian oligarchs, Rosneft was catapulted into the world's largest listed oil company by output, with production of more than 4.5m barrels a day (b/d), which is about 40% of Russia's total. Yet even as inve