Exxon Neftegas Limited (ENL; russian: Эксон Нефтегаз Лимитед) is a defunct subsidiary of the American oil company
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...
which operated mostly in
Russia, notably
Sakhalin 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 ( rus, Охо́тское мо́ре, Ohótskoye móre ; ja, オホーツク海, Ohōtsuku-kai) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands ...
.
The subsidiary is incorporated in the
Bahamas and has an office in
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
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 investment in the form of a controlling ownership in a business in one country by an entity based in another country. It is thus distinguished from a foreign portfolio investment by a notion of direct co ...
into Russia at the time.
Across the 2000s, ENL awarded multiple contracts for logistics relating to the project, including
Amur Shipbuilding Plant
OJSC Amur Shipbuilding Plant (russian: Амурский судостроительный завод, ''Amurskiy Sudostroitelnyy Zavod'', and also called the "Leninskiy Komsomol Shipyard") is an important shipyard in eastern Russia, based in Kom ...
,
Sakhalinskiye Aviatrassy
Aurora (russian: italic=yes, Аврора) is a Russian airline headquartered in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalin Oblast. It is a subsidiary of Aeroflot which operates domestic and international flights in the Russian Far East region. , Aurora ranks ...
,
Fesco Transport,
Vostok Aviation,
Sovcomflot, and
Lukoil
The PJSC Lukoil Oil Company ( stylized as LUKOIL or ЛУКОЙЛ in Cyrillic script) is a Russian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Moscow, specializing in the business of extraction, production, transport, and sale of petrol ...
. 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
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...
, Exxon announced that it would pull out of Russia immediately, including ENL and the
Sakhalin-I 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
*
Exxon Mobile Rewards
{{ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil subsidiaries
Oil companies of Russia
Companies based in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk