LONDON — BP chief executive Tony Hayward will meet this week with Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to assure the government of the stability of the British oil producer, two people familiar with the plan said.
The BP CEO also will visit TNK-BP, which accounts for about 25 percent of the London-based company's output and reserves, said the people, who declined to be identified because the meetings are confidential.
Hayward will be in Moscow on Monday and Tuesday, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said last week, without providing details.
Hayward wants to meet Russian leaders after missing the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum earlier this month amid efforts by BP to stanch the flow of crude from a leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, the people said. Sechin is also chairman of state-owned Rosneft, Russia's largest oil producer.
"BP will need to assure the Russian side that the Gulf spill won't affect the company's operations in Russia," said Andrei Kryuchenkov, a strategist at VTB Capital in London. "It's guaranteed that there will be many questions from the Russian side about safety and BP will be trying to convince them that their operations will be maintained to the best standard."
Sheila Williams, a spokeswoman for BP in London, declined to comment on Hayward's travel plans. Nikolai Gorelov, a Moscow-based spokesman at TNK-BP, would not comment on whether company executives would meet Hayward.
BP suspended dividend payouts for three quarters and plans to sell about $10 billion in assets to pay for the Gulf cleanup and fines related to the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The company also agreed to deposit $20 billion in an independently managed account to cover restoration costs and compensation claims.
BP, which bought $1 billion of shares in Rosneft's initial public offering in 2006, has a joint venture with the company to explore for oil and gas off Sakhalin Island and to survey for hydrocarbons in the Arctic.
Sechin said June 17 that Russia would consider buying BP's stake in Rosneft, if offered. David Peattie, BP's head in Russia, said a day later that the company did not sell any shares in Rosneft and did not plan to.
Rosneft CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov said this month that he doubted BP would need to sell the shares and has not consulted the company about a possible sale.
BP owns half of TNK-BP, Russia's third-biggest crude producer, with the rest owned by four billionaires. The shareholders last year named Maxim Barsky to become TNK-BP CEO from 2011, who will take over from Mikhail Fridman, one of the owners.
Barsky's nomination was part of a settlement between shareholders over the company's management and strategy.
Robert Dudley, the former TNK-BP CEO who fled Russia in 2008 amid the dispute, is now in charge of the oil spill response operations in the Gulf.
TNK-BP has generated more than $25 billion of net income and distributed more than $20 billion in dividends since it was set up in 2003, Hayward said in March 2009. The dividend policy has not changed, Jonathan Muir, TNK-BP's chief financial officer, said in March.
The Gulf oil spill has cut BP's market value by 54 percent since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 people. The shares dropped to a 14-year low on June 25 on concern that Tropical Storm Alex, the first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, will disrupt the cleanup operations.
The storm should have a "very minimal effect" on the BP cleanup, said Jill Hasling, executive director of the Weather Research Center in Houston, which provides weather forecasts to the oil industry worldwide.