American oil giants made millions selling equipment to Russia despite calls to 'cease their trade': report

American fossil fuel giant Halliburton has been selling millions of dollars worth of oil and natural gas equipment to Russia, whose President, Vladimir Putin, launched his illegal conquest of neighboring Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, Daniel Boffey of The Guardian reports.

"Amid pressure on all US companies to cease their trade" with Moscow, Boffey reveals, "Russian customs records seen by The Guardian show that despite this move to sell up on 8th September, Halliburton subsidiaries exported equipment of a value of $5,729,600 to its former operation in Russia in the six weeks that followed the sale."

The items, Boffey notes, were "largely shipped from the US and Singapore although the records show it originated in a range of countries, including the UK, Belgium and France. The bulk of exports from the subsidiaries ended on 6th October but the last shipment to Russia from a Halliburton company, recorded as Halliburton MFG in the records, was of a sealing element priced at $2,939.40 on 24 October 2022 from Malaysia to a firm called Sakhalin Energy, a consortium that is developing the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in eastern Russian. Its investors include Gazprom. Shell disinvested from the consortium after the invasion of Ukraine. The products were imported from Turkey, bringing the total value of exports of Halliburton equipment to Russia since the company closed its operations to at least $7,163,317."

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Boffey continues, "Of all the exports to Russia made since last September, 98% were supplied to Halliburton's newly independent former operation, known as BurService, whose clients have included Gazprom, Rosneft, TNK-BP, and Lukoil. According to customs records, exports to Russia of Halliburton equipment, which range in type from pumps, to wrenches for the drilling of wells, and cement additives, continued until at least the end of June this year. More recent records are yet to be made available."

Boffey notes that "there is exasperation in Ukraine at the lethargy of many large industrial players in the West in extracting themselves from the Russian economy. The findings illustrate the difficulties multinational companies have had in unpicking their trading relationships and in controlling the distribution of their products via third parties."

Boffey adds, "Some of the world's largest US oil and gas field service companies are already facing questions over their conduct. The Kremlin is heavily dependent on its oil and gas sector for the revenue that funds its military. Earlier this month, the head of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez [D-New Jersey], wrote to Halliburton and their competitors SLB and Baker Hughes, after reports that the companies had continued to trade with Russia to various degrees after the invasion of Ukraine in February last year."

Boffey also pointed out, however, that "there is no suggestion that any of the companies breached the sanctions regime of the US or its Western partners."

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Boffey's entire exclusive scoop is available at this link.