Oil Shell seeks to divest Gazprom’s major gas project, sales talks with Chinese energy companies underway

Energy company Shell is in talks with Chinese energy companies to get rid of its stake in the Russian gas project.

The news agency reports on Shell’s discussions Bloomberg and the British newspaper The Telegraph, based on anonymous sources. Shell announced that it would give up its operations in Russia after the country started a war in Ukraine.

At the end of February, Shell said it would sell its stake in all its joint ventures with the Russian state gas company Gazprom. In March, Shell announced it would stop using Russian natural gas and oil in line with the British government’s policy.

Shell has been in talks with Chinese state-owned Cnooc, CNPC and Sinopec to sell its 27.5 percent stake in the Sakhalin 2 project. Negotiations are in the early stages and Shell is said to be open to discussions with non-Chinese buyers as well.

Gazprom owns half of the project to exploit subsea oil and gas fields around the island of Sakhalin. The Japanese Mitsui & Co and Mitsubishi are also involved in the project.

Shell has said that withdrawing from Russia will cost it up to $ 5 billion, or about € 4.6 billion.