Who said that those overseeing Russia's oil interests aren't capable of getting along with energy folks in the rest of the world?

While giant natural gas producer Gazprom (OTC BB: OGZPY) continues to tussle with Ukraine, the powers that be at TNK-BP, a big and contentious partnership between BP (NYSE: BP) and a trio of Russian billionaires, appears to have healed nicely after a year of major squabbling. It's a key reason I believe Foolish energy investors should pay renewed attention to BP.

The joint venture, which was founded in 2003, sailed along nicely until last year. Then, the Russian partners began pushing for, among other things, the ouster of Robert Dudley, the partnership's BP-appointed CEO. Indeed, at mid-year, Dudley was forced to exit Russia and run the company from an unspecified location in central Europe.

At the time, it looked as if Russian pressure might ultimately force BP to sell its partnership interests, perhaps to Gazprom, probably at a bargain-basement price. The British company would have taken a hit in doing so. The partnership represented about a quarter of its global production and a fifth of its reserves.

But one morning early in September, we awakened to discover that the parties astoundingly had buried their hatchets. And, as last week came to a close, the deal was ultimately finalized. I won't go into the details of the settlement because they'd bore you silly. All you need to know for now is that an equally divided board will be elected shortly, a new CEO with Russian language facility will be named, and at some point up to 20% of the partnership will be sold through an IPO. Beyond that, what has become Russia's third-largest oil company will continue its growing operations

BP therefore has come out far better than did Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A), which was forced a couple of years ago to sell most of its interest in a Sakhalin Island project. Even ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) has had its ups and downs with its Russian hosts on Sakhalin. And we can only hope that France's Total (NYSE: TOT), which also is active in Russia, remains unscathed.

The real key for Fools, however, is that BP has now overcome recent difficulties in its own CEO suite and moved past a deadly Texas refinery explosion, an Alaskan oil pipeline leak, and the Russian partnership turmoil. It's a company on the ascendancy that just happens to offer a more than 7% dividend yield. It's a member of Big Oil that Fools seemingly should watch very, very closely.

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