SLB (New York Stock Exchange: SLB) has there are no plans to leave Russia two years after the invasion of Ukraine, director general Olivier Le Peuch told the Financial times on Monday, despite Western pressure to stem the flow of oil funds to Vladimir Putin's war machine.
He The world's largest oilfield services company, formerly Schlumberger, has not made a decision on whether to follow the lead of its biggest oilfield services rival, Baker Hughes.BKR) and Halliburton (HAL) in selling its Russian operations and is fulfilling its contracts with customers, the CEO said.
“The team there (in Russia) is operating autonomously and I think to some extent it is behind the curtain. We are protecting our assets, that is our priority,” Le Peuch said. FOOT In an interview.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, SLB (SLB) has built a significant business in Russia, generating ~5% of the company's $33.1 billion in revenue last year and employing ~9,000 people.
SLB (SLB) halted the deployment of new investments and technology in Russia in March 2022 and halted product shipments to the country in July 2023 following an escalation of sanctions, but unlike its rivals, it still retains a presence in the country.
“Russia's oil industry would collapse without foreign oil services companies,” said Global Witness senior investigator Lela Stanley. FOOT.
Western governments have been cautious about toughening sanctions on the Russian oil and gas industry for fear it could lead to a surge in commodity prices that destabilize the global economy, but some experts say this fear is exaggerated.
“Russia has the means to maintain production without these technologies; it will simply be more expensive,” according to former Bank of America vice president Craig Kennedy, now at Harvard. “And the more they have to spend on producing barrels, the less they have left for the pumps.”