Rosneft welcomes the work of Chevron, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, and Weatherford companies due to another renewal of their licences by the American regulator. Rosneft would like to pay attention to unlawful accusations against our Company contained in the interview of Special Representative of the USA for Venezuela Elliot Abrams to Financial Times Newspaper. Mister Abrams accused Rosneft of being “the central for survival of the regime” and once again threatened to impose new sanctions against the Company. Perhaps, due to the later OFAC decision, we have to share this “central role” with the designated companies.

Rosneft acknowledges that Mr. Abrams statements lack consistency since re-issuance of licences for American and pro-American companies is motivated by protection of their investments. Rosneft is also an investor in Venezuela and our work there is also aimed for protection and repayment of investments, is based on contracts concluded long before the imposition of sanctions and on cooperation agreement with PDVSA signed in December of last year and fully complies with all standards of international law. Thus, USA officials demonstrate hypocrisy by selectively - in violation of international law - granting advantages to “their” companies to the detriment of competitors. This is also a way to interpret permission for purchasing Venezuelan oil granted by USA to Reliance Company, one of the India major oil producers.

It is well at this time to recall the information reported by mass media on de facto trade of Syrian oil by American Army and the public offer to another American company to develop Syrian oil fields disregarding all standards of current legislation. The US Administration likes to dispute about “molecules of freedom” generated by American enterprises. It is appropriate to recall the renaming of French fries to freedom fries in protest against actions of France who didn’t support intervention to Iraq, which was, by the way, later recognized by Americans as unjustified and wrong.

We would like to know what the difference is between oil molecules produced by American companies in Venezuela under licences issued by the US Administration and molecules of the same Venezuelan oil produced and sold by Rosneft under existing contracts.

As to the statement of Mr Abrams about what “everyone in Washington thinks about Rosneft”, we are open to collaboration in interests of our countries and Rosneft shareholders, part of which are American citizens and legal personalities.

Rosneft Information Division
Tel.: + 7 (499) 517-88-97
October 28, 2019 

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