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When TNK-BP, the Russian-British oil venture, pushed the unit that owns its vast Kovykta gas field into bankruptcy last week, it was the latest twist in a long-running saga that highlights how difficult it is to business in Russia.

The move is either an act of desperation or a clever trick designed to trigger a sale of the field and win back the $600m investment TNK-BP has put into Kovykta. Either way, it is most unlikely to mark the end of the story. Sales of gas from the east Siberian field, which contains 2 trillion cubic metres of gas, have been stymied for more than a decade – because Gazprom, the Russian export monopoly, refuses to pipe the gas east to export markets in China.

The standoff looked to be lifted when Gazprom agreed to buy control of the field in 2007 for $700m to $900m, but the state-controlled gas group again backed off and never completed the deal. In the meantime, Russia’s natural resources ministry has constantly threatened to revoke TNK-BP’s licence for the field for failing to meet production targets, sending jitters through the investor community.

Talks this March with Rosneftegaz, a state-owned vehicle chaired by Russia’s powerful deputy prime minister Igor Sechin, appeared to give fresh hope for a sale. Mr Sechin, who also chairs Rosneft, the state- controlled oil group, which is seeking to make inroads into the gas industry, has lately been putting pressure on Gazprom. But no-one will say how much progress has been made in these talks.

Some analysts speculate TNK-BP’s bankruptcy move may be a hard-nosed gambit to push through a sale, and trigger competition between Gazprom and Rosneftegaz. Under Russian bankruptcy laws, the unit’s assets would be sold off to pay off creditors, notably TNK-BP. But publicly at least, Gazprom is calling the company’s bluff. Viktor Timoshilov, the Gazprom official responsible for development of eastern gas projects, told reporters on Monday that Gazprom still had no use for Kovykta.

Yet with prospects for a quick sale unclear, as ever in Russia there is another layer. The bankruptcy of Rusia-Petroleum, the unit that holds the Kovykta license, puts the pressure on Rusia-Petroleum’s other shareholders to come up with funds for the field or be squeezed out of any bankruptcy enforced sale.

TNK-BP owns a 62.8 per cent stake in the unit. OGK-3, the power generation company owned by Norilsk Nickel, owns 25 per cent, and the remainder is held by the local administration in Irkutsk. OGK-3 bought its shares at the height of the crisis for $576m, just as the stake’s previous owner Vladimir Potanin, who also holds a big stake in Norilsk, was scrambling for cash to meet margin calls.

Mr Potanin says the deal made sense to integrate electricity assets in OGK-3. But after a slew of government probes, OGK-3 is now under pressure to return the funds it should have invested in power plant upgrades to the government by the end of the year. The only way OGK-3 can avoid being squeezed out of receiving any funds under a bankruptcy-enforced sale of the Kovykta license is to buy out Rusia-Petroleum’s debts to TNK-BP. It would not receive any money for its stake under a bankruptcy sale because it is not a creditor to the company.

The threat to the license still looms large. But people close to TNK-BP say the bankruptcy option is now the best bet they have to protect their investment. With Mr Sechin pledging there will be no “crude expropriation of the field”, investors will be watching closely for the denouement of a saga that has long clouded the business climate.

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