Splash247: Putin opens door to ExxonMobil Sakhalin-1 return

Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that could allow US supermajor ExxonMobil to regain its stake in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project.

Putin signed the decree on Friday ahead of his meeting with US president Donald Trump in Alaska. The decree also opens up the possibility for other foreign investors to return to Russia.

The decree is added as a follow-up to a previous decree from October 2022, when Russia seized ExxonMobil’s 30% stake in Sakhalin-1 without compensation and awarded it to a subsidiary of Russian oil company Rosneft. Before the Kremlin seized Exxon’s stake, it froze any sale of the US firm’s stake in the project.

The other two foreign partners in the project, India’s ONGC Videsh and Japanese firm Sodeco, stayed as part of the project. ExxonMobil, however, wrote off around $4.6 billion when it exited the project.

The 220,000-bpd project consists of three offshore fields in the Sea of Okhotsk and an onshore processing station on Sakhalin Island.

The summit between Putin and Trump is expected to focus on investment and business collaboration, as well as discussions about peace in Ukraine.