Mikhail Fridman, a billionaire businessman, this week clinched a £3.7 billion deal through his investment company, LetterOne Group, with German utility firm RWE to acquire Dea, its oil and gas arm, which includes 12 licences off the Scottish coast.
But the Department for Energy and Climate Change(DECC) has expressed fears that the Russian company could be affected if, in the EU's dispute with Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine, further economic sanctions were imposed on Russian firms.
A Whitehall insider claimed there would be "enormous" problems if this happened, suggesting all of the 12 fields in the North Sea acquired by LetterOne could be shut down with not only production implications but safety and environmental risks too.
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