By America Hernandez
PARIS (Reuters) – French oil major TotalEnergies has between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in annual dividends from its stakes in Russian gas producer Novatek and the Yamal LNG project stuck in Russia, CEO Patrick Pouyanne told analysts on Thursday.
Pouyanne said that while in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the company managed to transfer some funds out of Russia, “today little to nothing is coming” due to Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.
TotalEnergies owns 19.4% of Novatek, which it cannot sell because sanctioned Russian billionaire Gennady Timchenko has a right of first refusal.
The French firm also holds a 20% direct stake in Yamal, Russia’s biggest LNG export project majority-owned by Novatek. Russian LNG is not currently sanctioned by the European Union.
“Dividends from Novatek represented about $600 million per year, more or less — most are stuck on Novatek accounts … it represents around 1 billion more or less,” Pouyanne said.
“Then you have the Yamal dividends … that’s probably another $500 million, so probably by the end of the year $1.5 to $2 billion of cash dividends which are (trapped) somewhere,” he added.
TotalEnergies no longer includes its Russia holdings in its financial reports.
(Reporting by America Hernandez; Writing by Dominique Patton; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter)
