MOSCOW: The billionaires who own half of Russian oil firm TNK-BP plan to make a cash offer for BP's 50 percent stake, raising the prospect of a bid contest with state-backed Rosneft, which analysts say could net BP well over $21 billion.
Such an auction would pit the four Soviet-born tycoons, who amassed their assets in the chaotic 1990s, against Rosneft's Chief Executive Igor Sechin, a confidant of President Vladimir Putin who wants to build his company into a national champion.
A source close to the AAR consortium, which groups Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik, said it would make a binding offer by mid-October.
"We will pay cash, but have not yet determined the price," said the source.
AAR had previously said it was willing to pay $10 billion for half of BP's stake in Russia's third-largest oil company.
But BP, which put its entire TNK holding up for sale in June after a collapse in shareholder relations, was not interested in that offer, industry sources said.
AAR then expanded the scope of its bid after Rosneft said it also wanted to buy BP's stake, for cash and stock.
Analysts say BP now stands to make three or four times its original investment of $7 billion made in 2003, as it faces multi-billion-dollar damages arising from the Gulf of Mexico disaster in 2010.
"Anything that leads to the end of a fight (between TNK's shareholders) with an impossible solution is positive," Riccardo Orcel, deputy chief executive of VTB Group, a Russian state bank close to Rosneft, told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit yesterday. "TNK-BP is a phenomenal company — it has probably been the best ever investment that BP has made."
Under a shareholder agreement, AAR has exclusive rights to make an offer by a mid-October deadline that falls 90 days after BP put the stake up for sale. Other suitors may then seek to strike a deal, creating the prospect of a bidding contest.
AAR would "likely" fund the deal by borrowing through TNK-BP and tapping other funding, the source said. How much the AAR shareholders themselves might invest is unclear.
The consortium will start talks with banks this week.
Bankers have told Reuters that it would be possible for AAR to finance a significant portion of any purchase by leveraging up TNK-BP, which has paid out $19 billion in dividends since BP came into the venture in 2003.
TNK-BP posted a record $14.6 billion in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) last year. At year-end it had a low debt to equity ratio of 26 percent.
With net debt of around $3 billion now and EBITDA estimated at $13 billion, "there is huge capacity for additional debt", the AAR source said.
BP expects to receive bids from both AAR and Rosneft and will consider them on their merits. "We will evaluate, negotiate and make a decision," a spokesman said.
Bankers and analysts say that BP is likely to prefer Rosneft as a buyer and would seek to use good relations with the Kremlin to gain new opportunities for oil and gas exploration in Russia.
BP has, however, lost the Arctic offshore territory that it had hoped to explore with Rosneft in a joint venture deal which was killed off by a challenge from its TNK partners.
Rosneft subsequently turned to ExxonMobil for an Arctic deal, with the US firm's chief executive Rex Tillerson now a regular visitor to Russia.
Under a sale of its TNK stake to Rosneft, BP would plough back part of the proceeds into Rosneft stock, a source familiar with its thinking said, but would not embark immediately on any joint exploration operations with the Kremlin-backed company.
Meanwhile the 12 international banks that have already started financing talks with Rosneft are unlikely at the same time to talk about financing for AAR's full bid, banking sources in London said.
But bankers said the final outcome could be for Rosneft to eventually take complete control of TNK-BP, creating a global major pumping nearly 4 million barrels per day of oil.
BP could be joined as a minority shareholder in the merged group by a Chinese buyer, fulfilling government plans to sell down the state's 75.1 percent stake in Rosneft, the bankers said.
TNK-BP co-owners to bid for entire BP stake
TNK-BP co-owners to bid for entire BP stake
Saudi youth turn to AI for art and culture
- Creativity, heritage and technology converge in a new generation of artists
RIYADH: As Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 places creativity, culture and technological innovation at the core of national development, the impact of these priorities is becoming increasingly visible across a wide range of disciplines and practices.
Through the use of artificial intelligence, young Saudis are integrating technology into their creative work both as a practical tool and as a medium in its own right. In doing so, they are expanding their capabilities, exploring personal and collective identity, and finding new ways to preserve and reinterpret cultural heritage.
“AI gives young Saudis a new way to interact with their own cultural inheritance,” said Dmitry Zaytsev, founder of Dandelion Civilization, a platform designed to help individuals shape unique professional paths.
“Traditional design elements such as calligraphy or geometric motifs were once difficult to modify. Experimentation required resources and formal approval. AI removes that barrier and makes exploration immediate. A creator can test many versions of a pattern and see which ones still feel authentic to them,” he told Arab News.
According to Zaytsev, this emerging form of expression does not signal a rejection of tradition, but rather a deeper engagement with it. “The young creator discovers what can change and what must remain constant. AI becomes a sketchbook that allows culture to evolve through curiosity rather than fear. When creators correct a model or push it toward local rhythm, they strengthen rather than dilute cultural identity,” he explained.
Sarah AlBaiz, an art adviser, researcher and artist, uses code to blend visual art with concepts drawn from culture and philosophy. While her early practice focused primarily on painting, her trajectory shifted during the 2020 AI Artathon, a pioneering international event highlighting collaboration between humans and machines in artmaking, where she discovered how to merge her engineering background with her creative work.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Saudi youth are using AI as a creative tool to reinterpret heritage, from calligraphy to folklore.
• AI is helping artists experiment faster without the traditional barriers of resources or formal approval.
• The Kingdom is backing creative AI nationally, with programs like SAMAI aiming to empower 1 million Saudis for an AI-driven future.
Operating within the field of computational creativity, where technology actively participates in the artistic process, AlBaiz explores themes of finance and faith. “Because they’re two sides of who I am,” she said. “When you talk about values, for example, that is both a term used in finance and trade from an objective perspective, but also moral and spiritual value.”
“When you understand prompting in AI, you can get it to produce almost anything. But it’s also informed by the training data it has,” she said.
Rather than relying on a single platform, AlBaiz experiments with multiple AI models to test their limitations and audience reception. “I work a lot with language as well, so large language models are right up my street when it comes to computational creativity.”ee
Her work has gained international recognition. At the 2022 Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, she co-created an artwork under the banner of Super Artistic AI that generated Al-Qatt Al-Asiri motifs from southern Saudi Arabia. The piece received an Audience Award.
Beyond her artistic practice, AlBaiz is developing an intelligent art advisory system aimed at helping users navigate the Saudi art landscape. Designed as an initial point of contact, the system would guide users through potential pathways before they engage with a human adviser.
“It’s about understanding what role AI plays in the pursuit of what you want,” she said. “When I decided to focus on Qantara and building the advisory, I recognized that many of the systems required would need to be intelligent systems that offload a lot of work from me and the team.”
“When AI is an enabler rather than the end result, it becomes less intimidating because it feels risk-free for the end user,” she added.
Zaytsev echoed this idea, describing AI as a kind of rehearsal space. “Young people practice conversations, explore sensitive topics and organize their thoughts without social risk. This builds emotional clarity and confidence,” he said.
While generative tools such as large language models attract much of the attention, AI’s creative applications extend far beyond text and image generation.
Fairooz Alawami, trained as both an architect and engineer, uses AI to create self-expressive visual works inspired by dance.
“My practice is focused on contextualizing movement,” she said. “Because of my architectural training, I work with 3D modeling software called Rhino, which includes a visual coding language. Within that environment, you can also write code in Python, JavaScript or C#.”
Alawami employs OpenPose to analyze videos of her dancing by mapping points across her body. She then applies another computer vision model, MIDAS, which converts images or videos into depth frames. “If OpenPose gives me a skeleton, MIDAS gives me depth,” she explained. The resulting data is fed into 3D modeling software, where it is refined and manipulated into finished artworks.
She began dancing at a young age. “I didn’t find it, it found me,” she said. Movement later became the foundation of her artistic practice, leading to her first major project around three years ago while completing her master’s degree using the Grasshopper plugin. At the time, the workflow was slow and fragmented, but the arrival of ChatGPT helped streamline the process by making it easier to write and learn code.
“I think my love for dance and my love for art and design came together in a way that felt uniquely me,” she said. “Once I found that space, I just ran with it. It is my singular voice.”
Her work also draws heavily on cultural and musical heritage. One recent project was inspired by folklore referenced in the iconic song “Al Leila wa Leila” by Umm Kulthum. Alawami extracted musical stems from the track and mapped them to characters within the narrative. “The vocals were Shahrazad, the storyteller, and each stem represented a different narrative element,” she said. Earlier works were influenced by Islamic architecture and the geometric patterns found throughout Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab world.
“There are some incredible artists using generative AI to do very impressive things, and I don’t think I fall into that camp,” she said. “For me, AI is more like a skills-gap tool that helps me reach where I want to go.
“As humans, whether we realize it or not, the act of creating feeds us in some way. Lowering the barrier to entry makes creativity less intimidating.”
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Today, Saudi Arabia’s creative sector is supported by expanding national infrastructure. Initiatives such as the Cultural Scholarship Program place Saudi students in more than 60 universities worldwide, spanning disciplines from archaeology and literature to design, filmmaking and culinary arts. In parallel, the Kingdom launched the SAMAI initiative last year, aiming to equip 1 million Saudis with the skills needed to engage confidently in an AI-driven world.
Within Vision 2030, culture, tourism, digitalization and AI are treated as strategic sectors rather than peripheral concerns. As Saudi Arabia develops its creative economy as a form of soft power, its youth are becoming increasingly digitally fluent. AI tools are now embedded within creative workflows, enabling a new generation to explore heritage, remix traditional aesthetics and develop narratives that resonate on a global stage.
