TotalEnergies earns $400 million a year from selling Russian LNG, CEO says

By America Hernandez

PARIS, July 23 - French oil major TotalEnergies earns about $400 million annually from selling liquefied natural gas cargoes from Russia's Yamal LNG plant, TotalEnergies' CEO told analysts on a results call on Thursday.

Since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, TotalEnergies kept its stakes in Russian LNG plants but deconsolidated the holdings, meaning the money no longer appears in official reporting.

European Union countries are importing record-high volumes from Yamal, Russia's biggest LNG plant, though EU sanctions will ban those imports beginning next year.

"There are two activities...the lifting of cargoes, on this one we have direct access to the cash booked by our UK entity. The magnitude of this business is an average of $400 million, but it goes up and down because the contracts are linked to Brent (oil prices)," Pouyanne said.

Brent crude prices have been pushed to multi-year highs due to supply disruptions triggered by the war in Iran. 

The other part of the income, Pouyanne said, comes from dividends on Total's 20% ownership stake in Yamal LNG, plus a 19.4% stake in Yamal's parent company Novatek.

"Some cash flows have been distributed, but not the full of it... It's from time to time, and there's not an easy way to do this because we respect sanctions and sanctions in Europe have limited the capacity to transfer from Russia to Europe," he added.

Pouyanne did not give a figure for the amounts repatriated to date.

In 2024 he stated that dividends from Novatek represented about $600 million per year but were stuck abroad. 

(Reporting by America Hernandez;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Kirsten Donovan)