On the day the U.S. barred its citizens from conducting business with Russia’s Igor Sechin, BP PLC’s American chief executive was in an uncomfortable spot: sitting at a boardroom table in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the oil executive. BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley is a director of OAO Rosneft , the state-controlled Russian oil company where Mr. Sechin is president and a major shareholder. The British company owns 19.75% of Rosneft. To ensure access to Russia’s vast reserves—and avoid political tangles that can ensnare companies in the country that don’t have Kremlin connections—big Western oil companies including BP, SA and Exxon Mobil Corp. have allied themselves with loyalists of Russian President Vladimir Putin . Mr. Sechin, a former government official, is one of Mr. Putin’s closest allies. Now, those connections are becoming liabilities as Western nations push Russia to by sanctioning some of those same individuals. That means the […]