Exxon Neftegas Limited (ENL; ) is a defunct subsidiary of the American oil company
ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational List of oil exploration and production companies, oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the Successors of Standard Oil, largest direct s ...
which operated mostly in Russia, notably
Sakhalin
Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...
and other parts of the Far East. ENL was the primary American operator (as well as 30% owner) of
Sakhalin-I Consortium, which oversaw exploration and production of oil and gas on both Sakhalin island and in the Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi fields in the
Sea of Okhotsk
The Sea of Okhotsk; Historically also known as , or as ; ) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the sou ...
.
The subsidiary is incorporated in the Bahamas and has an office in
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (, , ) is a city and the administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It is located on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, north of Japan. Gas and oil extraction as well as processing are amongst the main industries on ...
.
Exxon Neftgas was led by future ExxonMobil CEO
Rex Tillerson from 1998 to at least May 2001.
Founding
ENL was first founded on April 26, 2001, when
ABB and ExxonMobil signed an agreement for ABB to design the front-end systems of the Sakhalin-I project's first phase. ENL was formally declared as commercial on October 29 of that same year, representing a $12 billion USD ($20 billion today) investment, the largest
foreign direct investment
A foreign direct investment (FDI) is an ownership stake in a company, made by a foreign investor, company, or government from another country. More specifically, it describes a controlling ownership an asset in one country by an entity based i ...
into Russia at the time.
Across the 2000s, ENL awarded multiple contracts for logistics relating to the project, including
Amur Shipbuilding Plant,
Sakhalinskiye Aviatrassy,
Fesco Transport,
Vostok Aviation,
Sovcomflot, and
Lukoil. On July 12, 2003, ENL began drilling at the Chavyo wellsite, the project's first extended-reach drillsite. Later in 2005, ExxonMobil announced that ENL has start up production on the project, and that by 2006, the project could produce 250,000 barrels per day.
In 2007, ENL broke a world drilling record for the world's longest extended-reach oil well at 37,016 feet; it superseded its record in 2008 by 1,306 more feet. Also in 2007, ENL announced it had passed 100 million barrels produced from Sakhalin.
Fate
Upon Russia's
2022 invasion of Ukraine, Exxon announced that it would pull out of Russia immediately, including ENL and the
Sakhalin-I
The Sakhalin-I () project, a sister project to Sakhalin-II, is a consortium for production of oil and gas on Sakhalin, Sakhalin Island and immediately offshore. It operates three natural gas field, fields in the Okhotsk Sea: Chayvo, Odoptu, and ...
project. Exxon's pullout announcement was published on March 1, 2022, and paired with statement in support of Ukraine, though Russia attempted to halt the pullout by passing legislation which barred energy companies based in "unfriendly countries" from pulling out of Russian energy projects. ExxonMobil responded by announcing that it would sue the
Federal government of Russia in August unless it would be allowed to exit the country.
References
External links
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Exxon Mobile Rewards
{{ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil subsidiaries
Oil companies of Russia
Companies based in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk