Rosneft replaces departed western board members

Russian state-controlled Rosneft has replaced its six western board members with a Qatari energy veteran, a senior oil executive from the Philippines and four figures from Russian politics, banking and academia.

More than half of Rosneft's 11-member board have quit since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, forcing the company into a major reshuffle at its annual general meeting on 30 June. Taieb Belmahdi, a former executive at Qatar's state-owned QE, has been elected chairman of the board to replace ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who stepped down in May.

Belmahdi's appointment takes Qatar's representation to three, alongside existing board members Faisal Alsuwaidi and Hamad Rashid Al-Mohannadi from Qatari sovereign wealth fund QIA. The fund holds a 19.5pc stake in Rosneft as part of a consortium with trading firm Glencore.

Pedro Aquino, chief executive of Philippines' state-owned energy company PNOC, is the only other non-Russian addition to the board. The four other new members are Gazprombank chairman Andrey Akimov, Krasnoyarsk territory governor Alexander Uss, Vladimir Litvinenko from St Petersburg Mining University and Alexander Nekipelov from the Moscow School of Economics.

Along with Schroeder, BP chief executive Bernard Looney and his predecessor Bob Dudley, Nord Stream 2 executive director Matthias Warnig and former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl all resigned from Rosneft's board since the war in Ukraine started. German banking veteran Hans-Joerg Rudloff withdrew his candidacy for re-election in April.

Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin, Russian deputy prime minister Alexander Novak and presidential economic advisor Maxim Oreshkin have been re-elected to the Rosneft board.

By James Keates