BP shareholders have called for a cash payout following the oil giant’s $27bn (£17bn) deal with Rosneft after it emerged that the UK company’s new structure will see investor returns from Russia fall as much as 85pc.

The sale of BP’s 50pc holding in Russian joint-venture TNK-BP will see the UK company receive about 19.2pc of Rosneft’s stock, valued at $13.5bn. BP will also receive a cash payment of $11bn-$13bn.

On Monday, BP said no agreement had yet been reached and that it was in advanced talks with Rosneft over the stake.

However, the deal means that BP’s dividend stream from TNK will vanish, leaving shareholders concerned about future payouts.

Last year BP’s 50pc holding in TNK resulted in a $3.7bn payout, and in total BP has generated $19bn in dividends from the time it invested in TNK in 2003. Pay-outs from Rosneft following the new deal are likely to fall well short of those type of returns.

This is despite a promise from Rosneft that it will to pay 25pc of its earnings back to shareholders every year. Rosneft has assured BP that this return will be legally binding and has been sanctioned by Vladimir Putin but shareholders claim the deal will change BP’s earnings profile dramatically.

Rosneft will vote on the return at a meeting on November 30 where it is expected to be rubber stamped.

According to Rosneft’s 2011 net profits of $10.8bn, the Russian group would have paid a $2.7bn dividend. As a 19pc shareholder, BP would have received a $540m payout.

One positive for BP shareholders is that sources close to Rosneft have stressed that the company’s president, Igor Sechin, has suggested the company’s dividend policy will be expansive.

Rosneft insiders also hit back at shareholder criticism by pointing out that BP’s joint-venture with Russian oligarchs at Alfa Access Renova (AAR) had become dysfunctional, leading AAR to freeze dividends this year as a means of trying to force BP to buy its 50pc shareholding.

Instead, Rosneft will now buy both halves of TNK. A deal between Rosneft and AAR is expected to be announced by Thursday. Rosneft’s cash offer to AAR will be back-stopped by Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.

Those in the Rosneft camp said that owning both parts of TNK would lead to significant synergies, thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Rosneft currently has pipelines and wells that sit alongside TNK’s, a structure that will be radically restructured after the deal.

BP shareholders demanded that cash earned from the deal be returned via a share buy-back scheme. There are mounting concerns that the money will be added to the capital set aside to cover liabilities from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.

However, deal insiders insisted that would not happen, with BP’s board considering options including returning capital to shareholders as requested, paying down debt, or reinvesting in development projects. The board will decide in “due course” which path to follow, with an announcement unlikely to coincide with the deal.

The sale itself would not complete until early 2013 because of the complex government approvals that Rosneft has to win within Russia. BP is expected to receive two board positions at Rosneft, with the Russian company not expected to take a BP board position.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/9624382/BP-investors-press-for-cash-payout-from-Rosneft-deal.html