Big Oil Deal Helps Putin More Than Russia

Sixteen years after undertaking a privatization program that marked its transformation into a sort of market economy, Russia has completed an about-face: With the $61 billion purchase of the oil company TNK-BP from private investors, it has renationalized nearly its entire petrochemical industry.

The TNK-BP deal, announced this week, is the biggest single nationalization in Russian history. It will turn the state-controlled Rosneft, which made the purchase, into the world's largest publicly traded oil company, with 1.7 times the production of Exxon Mobil. It will make Viktor Vekselberg, one of the investors on the selling side, into Russia's richest man. It represents the culmination of President Vladimir Putin's efforts to reverse the privatizations of the 1990s.