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Crude Oil Futures (Oct 2013) forum

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ExxonMobil doesn’t plan a return to the Russian oil industry, the U.S. supermajor’s chief executive Darren Woods told the Financial Times on Thursday, noting that talks with Russia are being held on recouping billions of U.S. dollars of expropriated assets.

The U.S. and Russian administration have pushed for energy cooperation and the U.S. has reportedly pitched Exxon’s return to the Sakhalin 1 oil and gas project as an incentive for Vladimir Putin to sit down for negotiations for peace in Ukraine.

Executives from Exxon are part of discussions with Russian officials, but not about the supermajor to return to Russia, Woods told FT. Exxon is involved in the talks as it seeks to recoup $4.6 billion in assets that Russia has expropriated, the executive added.

“We don’t have any plans to re-enter Russia,” Woods told FT in an interview published on Thursday.

“This was really around settlement discussions around the arbitration associated with the expropriation of our assets in 2022,” Exxon’s top executive said.

Earlier this week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov, said that the United States and Russia continue to discuss economic cooperation, including in the Sakhalin 1 oil project.

“I can mention Sakhalin-1 as the most obvious example of discussions that have started,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russia’s news agency Intefax, adding there are other areas in which talks have been held.

“We are ready to deepen these discussions and are open specifically to practical cooperation,” the Russian official said.

Exxon quit the Sakhalin-1 project after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which triggered an exodus of foreign oil firms and service providers.

To coincide with the Trump-Putin meeting, Vladimir Putin amended his decree from 2022 giving full Russian ownership to Sakhlain-1, and opened the door to a return of foreign companies to the oil and gas project.

Back in 2022, Putin signed a decree to seize the Sakhalin-1 project, in which Exxon held a 30% stake.

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2 hours ago

Ukraine launched fresh drone attacks on Russian energy assets Thursday, hitting two refineries including Gazprom’s giant Neftekhim Salavat complex in Bashkortostan, more than 1,300 kilometers from Ukrainian-held territory. The strikes set fire to storage facilities and marked one of Kyiv’s deepest penetrations into Russian industrial infrastructure since the war began, as it continues to target the Kremlin’s oil revenues that feed its war coffer.

The new assaults came just hours after trade data published by Reuters showed Russia’s seaborne oil product exports jumped 8.9% in August compared with July, rising to 9.44 million metric tons. The surge highlights Moscow’s ability to keep product flows moving through its ports even as revenues fall under Western sanctions and repeated Ukrainian strikes.

Exports through the Baltic ports of Primorsk, Vysotsk, St. Petersburg, and Ust-Luga climbed 12.3% month-on-month to 5.33 million tons, while Black Sea and Azov Sea shipments gained 3.6% to 3.39 million tons. Far East flows increased 13.5% to 693,500 tons after refineries completed maintenance, though Arctic shipments dropped by nearly a quarter to just 30,700 tons.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported last week that Russian oil revenues fell to about $13.5 billion in August, among the lowest levels since the invasion, as crude and product discounts widened and reliance on “shadow fleet” tankers grew. The contrast between higher shipment volumes and declining earnings illustrates the pressure Moscow faces to maintain output against sanctions and price caps.

Kyiv has vowed to intensify drone operations against Russian refineries, fuel depots, and export terminals, while export data shows Moscow’s resilience, despite revenues being under strain.