• The Company: British Petroleum, Europe’s second-largest oil company.
• The Document: 2007 Annual Report
• The Finding: A recent fight between Moscow and BP over expatriates at its Russian-affiliate is more than a minor dispute over extending foreigners’ work visas. From Bolivia to Venezuela to Kazakhstan to Russia, a trend of energy nationalization and putting domestic companies first, threatens the access of international rivals to lucrative oil & gas deposits.

The Upshot: TNK-BP, the third-largest oil producer in Russia, is a profitable 50-50 venture between BP and three local entities (Alfa Group, Renova Group, and Access Industries) with a diversified oil and gas portfolio in Western Siberia and the Ukraine. BP’s initial investment of $7.5 billion in 2003, now worth an estimated $20 billion, produced 1.43 million barrels a day of oil and gas condensate in 2007, with output expected to rise 18 percent to 1.9 million barrels a day in 2012.

BP needs new workable deposits, for reported production of 3.82 billion barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2007 was flat compared with the prior year.

The work visa dispute revolves around a delay in renewing work permits for 146 “international specialists” at TNK-BP, which BP and some foreign analysts consider a Russian power play for control of the venture. Earlier today, Forbes reported that 41 permits for top executives would be cleared within 10 days.

The permit kerfuffle is not the first clash between BP and Moscow. In 2007, after the Russian government threatened to revoke the license of TNK-BP to develop the Kovykta field, which holds more than two trillion cubic meters of natural gas, TNK-BP sold its 62.8 percent interest to the majority-owned state gas monopoly, Gazprom.

In light of rising oil prices, too, major OPEC producers, including Saudi Arabia, plan to revisit their production-sharing agreements with BP and its international oil sisters.

The Question: As nationalization policies intensify and output at their existing fields decline, where do BP and its sisters then go to find new opportunities?