The ban applies to all transactions that change the ownership structure of Russian companies, their capital and investment projects. The government has been tasked with submitting a list of banks and companies in the energy sector and in projects focused on the extraction of oil, natural gas, coal and nickel that will be subject to the ban within ten days.
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Putin can issue a special exemption in certain cases to allow the deals to go through, the decree said.
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After the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Western countries and their allies, including Japan, imposed a series of sanctions on Russia. Moscow has responded by, among other things, preventing foreign companies operating in the country from leaving Russia and in some cases confiscating their assets.
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On Thursday, Russian state oil champion Rosneft blamed ExxonMobil for the decline in production at the Sakhalin 1 project. The American energy company had previously said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it was preparing to transfer its 30 percent stake “to another party.”
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The American company operated oil and gas extraction on Sakhalin 1 in the Russian Far East. In 2021, the project produced 220,000 barrels of oil and gas per day. Production has dropped to just 10,000 barrels a day following Western sanctions on Russian trade following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
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In early July, Putin signed a decree transferring the rights to the vast Sakhalin 2 gas and oil project to a newly created Russian company. A government order on August 2 gave foreign investors in the project, British-Dutch company Shell and Japanese firms Mitsui and Mitsubishi, a month to apply for their stakes in the new entity. The new decree does not apply to the Sakhalin 2 project, Reuters wrote.
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Shell was looking for options to withdraw from the project. Tokyo, on the other hand, wants Japanese companies to keep their stakes in the project.
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The Italian banks UniCredit and Intesa, the American group Citi and the Austrian Raiffeisen continue to look for ways to leave Russia. Other banks, such as Société Générale and HSBC, have already disposed of their Russian assets.
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