As marben has declared the BP crisis play thread closed, here is a new one...

To kick off, there will be a press conference at pm today on a BP / Rosneft share swap deal:

BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) is poised to unveil a share swap agreement with OAO Rosneft, the state-controlled Russian oil firm, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that will deepen the U.K. company's ties in Russia.

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BP already owns a roughly 1% stake in Rosneft, and last year it struck a complex deal to effectively borrow against the stake when it was rushing to raise funds to help pay for the cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

For BP, which already has a significant joint venture in Russian known as TNK-BP, such a deal might give it greater access to Russia's vast resources of oil and gas.

For Rosneft, an agreement could be an opportunity to pick up BP's shares while they are still depressed in the aftermath of last year's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Many analysts believe the company's shares remain undervalued as BP battles the massive cleanup and legal costs of the spill.

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