The Wall Street Journal: Rosneft's Arctic superproject halted due to sanctions

The influential American publication The Wall Street Journal, citing informed sources familiar with the situation, reports that Rosneft's largest project to develop oil production in the Arctic, Vostok Oil, has been suspended due to sanctions. Initially, the publication explains, it was funded by Western investors and used imported technology.

The fact is that the commodity trader Trafigura Group, which has a 10% stake in this project, intends to withdraw from it, and in June already announced a freeze on investments in Russia. Wants to leave the project and another trader, Vitol Group, which owns 5%.

The publication recalls that Rosneft intended to invest about 10 trillion rubles in this project, so that by the end of this decade, up to 2% of all world oil would be produced in the Arctic.

In June of this year, within the framework of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, said that Russia's energy potential would be able to meet the demand for affordable energy resources for a long time, calling the Vostok Oil project "Noah's Ark of the world economy":

“The project is developing as planned, inevitable difficulties are being overcome, but we have full confidence that all tasks will be completed…”