Oilfield services group SLB has resisted increasing pressure to exit Russia


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Oilfield services giant SLB fended off increasing pressure to exit Russia, telling investors its operations did not violate new sanctions targeting the country’s oil sector.

SLBformerly known as Schlumberger, said on Friday it was reviewing tough rules issued by the Biden administration last week that barred the provision of US petroleum services to Russia. But the company’s chief executive Olivier Le Peuch told investors in a conference call that he believed at this point its operations were “in line with the new sanctions”.

The Houston-based company added that the contribution of its Russian operations fell to 4 percent of global revenues by 2024, or about $1.4bn, from 5 percent a year earlier.

SLB is under renewed pressure from US lawmakers to withdraw from Russia after issuing new sanctions aimed at stemming the flow of petrodollars used to fund the Kremlin’s. war in Ukraine. In October a bipartisan group of more than 50 members of Congress wrote to the Biden administration demanding tougher sanctions on US-based oilfield services companies operating in Russia, in a bid to force SLB to leave the country.

SLB is one of the few based in the US oil companies Still operating in the country after Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The company’s two biggest western rivals, Baker Hughes and Halliburton, sold their Russian operations to local managers in 2022.

Le Peuch told analysts that SLB had taken voluntary steps to curb its Russian activities, including stopping shipments of products and technology to the country from all SLB facilities around the world by 2023.

“We are reviewing the new sanctions, and at this point, we believe that our voluntary measures are consistent with the new sanctions,” he added.

A Financial Times investigation last year found that SLB had signed new contracts, advertised for more than 1,000 jobs and imported equipment to Russia since its competitors left the country.

Oilfield service providers do much of the less glamorous work for the global oil and gas industry – everything from building roads and laying pipelines to drilling wells and pumping crude oil. But they also provide access to sophisticated technologies essential to support exploration and development of complex drilling operations.

Oil industry experts say SLB is reluctant to leave Russia because the Kremlin is likely to reward it with contracts once the war against Ukraine ends and western sanctions are lifted.

Human rights groups and the Ukrainian government say SLB’s work in Russia has helped generate billions of dollars in oil revenue to support the Kremlin’s war effort. Last year, Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention added SLB to an “international war monger” blacklist.



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