TotalEnergies gas would have been used to fuel Russian warplanes

The Siberian gas produced by a joint venture of TotalEnergies has made it possible to manufacture fuel intended to supply Russian warplanes participating in the Ukraine conflict, the French newspaper Le Monde accuses on Wednesday, which is based on several documents and an investigation. of the NGO World Witness.

According to them, the Russian Termokarstovoye gas field operated by the Terneftegaz company, jointly owned by the French group at 49% with the Russian Novatek (51%), supplied condensed gas to a refinery near Omsk, which converted it into fuel, which then it was sent to power Russian aircraft until at least July.

These conclusions are based in particular on data from the Refinitiv database, which allows the tracking of the supply chain, supported by satellite images. According to them, Terneftegaz shipments have accounted for more than 8% of the raw material received at Omsk in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. The NGO then identified “hundreds of shipments of jet fuel from the Omsk refinery to Russian air force bases near Ukraine.”

Some 40,000 tons of jet fuel (kerosene) was shipped from Omsk to Sukhoi’s fighter-bomber bases in Morozovsk and Voronezh from February 13 through July, according to this analysis of Refinitiv data. No base had received fuel from the refinery since 2017, adds Global Witness.

Joint venture activities

The company explains to Le Monde that Novatek is the operator of the joint venture facility and that it has not received any dividends since February 2022.

Asked about its ability to control a joint venture of which it owns 49%, the group admits that “the majority thresholds depend on the nature of the decisions.” But the activities of the joint venture “are not the responsibility of the Board of Directors, but of the general management,” explains the former Total again.

For Louis Goddard, head of data research at Global Witness, TotalEnergies “says that its production has no connection to Russian military operations, but this argument no longer holds. Total must play fair.”

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, TotalEnergies notably announced that it would no longer invest in new projects in Russia, but it still maintains activities there, mainly focused on Yamal LNG liquefied gas.