TotalEnergies SE took a $4.1bn writedown on its flagship Russian gas project and indicated that it may belatedly join its peers in pulling back from the country two months after the invasion of Ukraine.
The French energy giant initially refused to cut ties with Moscow, despite other oil majors including BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell Plc announcing they would leave the country in protest at the Kremlin’s military aggression. Since then, new sanctions have cast doubt on the future of TotalEnergies’ flagship Russian project, Arctic LNG 2.
"New sanctions have effectively been adopted by the European authorities, notably prohibiting export from European Union countries of goods and technology for use in the liquefaction of natural gas benefitting a Russian company,”
TotalEnergies, which is based near Paris, said in a statement on Wednesday. "It appears that these new prohibitions constitute additional risks on the execution of the Arctic LNG 2 project.” Major international oil companies are set to take tens of billions of dollars in impairments on Russian assets as they report first-quarter earnings in the coming weeks.
