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 Rex Tillerson is an American energy executive who served as the 69th United States secretary of state from 2017 to 2018 in the first administration of Donald Trump. From 2006 to 2016, he was chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Exxon ...

from 1998 to at least May 2001.

Founding

ENL was first founded on April 26, 2001, when

ABB ABB Group is a Swedish-Swiss multinational electrical engineering corporation. Incorporated in Switzerland as ABB Ltd., and headquartered in Zurich, it is dual-listed on the Nasdaq Nordic exchange in Stockholm, Sweden, and the SIX Swiss Excha ...

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 OJSC Amur Shipbuilding Plant (, ''Amurskiy Sudostroitelnyy Zavod'', and also called the "Leninskiy Komsomol Shipyard") is an important shipyard in eastern Russia, based in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and founded in 1932. It employs 15,000 people, and pro ...

, Sakhalinskiye Aviatrassy, Fesco Transport, Vostok Aviation,

Sovcomflot Sovcomflot () is Russia's largest shipping company, and one of the global leaders in the maritime transportation of hydrocarbons, as well as the servicing and support of offshore exploration and oil and gas production. History In 1973, the Gover ...

, 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 On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, 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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{{ExxonMobil ExxonMobil subsidiaries Oil companies of Russia Companies based in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk