Exxon Mobil Corp.\u00a0faces a legal clash with Russian oil giant\u00a0Rosneft PJSCover its largest energy project in the country, with a potential liability of more than $400 million.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s state-owned oil behemoth\u00a0filed an arbitration claim\u00a0alleging \u201cunjust enrichment\u201d against all the Sakhalin-1 co-owners, including its own units, for a total of 89 billion rubles ($1.41 billion), according to the country\u2019s legal database. The offshore project is Exxon\u2019s flagship in the nation after\u00a0quitting most of its developments\u00a0earlier this year due to sanctions. The U.S. company operates the venture with a 30 percent stake.<\/p>\n
The press office for Exxon\u2019s unit in Russia said it\u2019s \u201caware of the court action, rejects the claims and will take action to defend the rights of the Sakhalin-1 consortium,\u201d without elaborating.<\/p>\n
Rosneft\u2019s claim covers a period from 2015 through to May this year, although no further details were published. Rosneft didn\u2019t immediately respond to calls and messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n
Sakhalin-1, which pumps more than 200,000 barrels of crude per day, is the only major oil project in Russia still operated by an international company. It\u2019s an exception in a nation where state-controlled companies have steadily expanded their control of energy resources, including developments around Sakhalin Island off the Pacific coast.<\/p>\n
In 2007, during President Vladimir Putin\u2019s second term, the Kremlin pressured Royal Dutch Shell Plc to sell a controlling stake in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project to Gazprom PJSC. In 2015, Russia\u2019s audit chamber told the nation\u2019s parliament that the government lost out on about $5 billion of taxes and other payments from the Sakhalin-1 venture because Exxon failed to increase natural gas sales.<\/p>\n
Exxon in turn filed a claim over taxation of Sakhalin-1 three years ago, which last year ended up with an\u00a0out-of-court deal\u00a0with the Russian government. Despite halting some drilling earlier this year due to international sanctions, Exxon said it could continue operations at Sakhalin-1 because it predates the 2013 deals that were subject to the restrictions.<\/p>\n
An arbitration court of Russia\u2019s Sakhalin region registered the Rosneft claim on July 20 and set a preliminary hearing for September 10, according to the legal database. The court asked Rosneft to provide details of an agreement for the development of a northern tip of Chayvo field off Sakhalin Island. The Moscow-based producer has said it\u2019s\u00a0developing this area\u00a0on its own, while it\u2019s bordering with Sakhalin-1\u2019s Chayvo field.<\/p>\n
Rosneft units own 20 percent of the Sakhalin-1 project, as does India\u2019s ONGC Videsh Ltd. Japan\u2019s Sakhalin Oil & Gas Development Co. holds the remaining 30 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Exxon Mobil Corp.\u00a0faces a legal clash with Russian oil giant\u00a0Rosneft PJSCover its largest energy project in the country, with a potential liability of more than $400 million. Russia\u2019s state-owned oil behemoth\u00a0filed an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,57,90,96,107,137,139,174,201,202,209,232,233,244,246,249,256,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-1306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-baroudi","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-embargo","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-lebanon","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}