Category: Current Events

When the axe came into the forest the trees said ‘at least the handle is one of us’

The head of ExxonMobil and Russian energy officials are scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss their energy partnership, which stalled last fall amid U.S. sanctions against Moscow. The talk will focus on the Exxon-led development of Russia’s Arctic oil and gas fields, according to media reports.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak will sit down in Moscow late on Wednesday local time, a Russian energy ministry spokeswoman confirmed to media outlets.

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is traveling to Russia this week to meet with Russian officials ostensibly about the supermajor’s operations in the country in lieu of the ongoing Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

“We don’t take sides in any geopolitical events,” Tillerson said of the conflict in Ukraine in a meeting with reporters a year ago. “We have navigated these kinds of challenges before.”

The company’s fourth-quarter output tumbled to a 15-year low, and its shares lost 8.7 percent of their value in 2014, the steepest annual decline since 2009.

The U.S. oil explorer’s willingness to expand in Russia when western governments are working to isolate President Putin’s regime may indicate it expects sanctions to be short-lived, said Timothy Ash, chief economist for emerging markets at Standard Bank Plc in London.