Japanese trading houses and energy companies Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. have formally joined the new operating company for the Sakhalin II LNG export plant in the Russian Far East.
A Russian statement said Mitsui and Mitsubishi have taken stakes of 12.5 percent and 10 percent respectively in the new operating company, Sakhalinskaya Energia.
The former operating company Sakhalin Energy had Gazprom as the majority shareholder with 50 percent plus one share while Shell had 27.5 percent of the shares and Mitsui and Mitsubishi 12.5 percent and 10 percent, which they now hold in the new company.
Shell decided to withdraw from operations in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, though its exit path from Sakhalin LNG is not clear and the shareholding could eventually revert to Gazprom.
After the Shell pull-out, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered in June 2022 that the Sakhalin LNG company’s assets be expropriated and passed on to a new entity.
In the latest statement, the Russians cited Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden as saying on July 28: “It's highly unlikely that we will become a member of a Russian legal entity to which our share in Sakhalin Energy may be transferred. It's not consistent with our intention to keep our assets in Russia. It creates a little bit more uncertainty about how exactly we will exit.”
The Sakhalin plant began LNG exports in 2009 and has annual capacity from its two Trains of around 10 million tonnes per annum with shipments going to Japan and South Korea.
Concerns
The Japanese government has backed Mitsui and Mitsubishi in retaining their Sakhalin LNG stakes and officials were cited as saying that potential Chinese shareholders could replace the Tokyo-based companies.
“In accordance with the notification of Mitsubishi Corp. on the consent to take ownership of a share in the authorized capital it will be transferred to a fully owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi,” said the Russian statement.
The previous Mitsubishi share in the Sakhalin plant was held by its subsidiary Diamond Gas Sakhalin and a 10 percent stake has been passed to it.
The Russian statement added that the 12.5 percent stake of Mitsui had been transferred to a company subsidiary registered in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and called MIT SEL Investment.
The new Sakhalinskaya Energia company was incorporated in the capital of Sakhalin Island, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in August 2022 and Gazprom was assigned its majority shareholding from the previous operating company.
