MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Corp is considering a complete withdrawal from Russia by June 24, two sources familiar with plans told Reuters on Thursday, following the US oil major's earlier decision to exit all operations in the country.
Exxon Mobil has not provided a timetable for the withdrawal but last month removed employees who are US citizens from Russia after Moscow launched what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine.
The first departures included staff from its large oil and gas production operations on Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East, including the Sakhalin 1 project.
"As we announced March 1, we are discontinuing operations and taking steps to exit the Sakhalin-1 venture," Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said in a written statement.
Exxon last year employed more than 1,000 people across Russia, with offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Yuzhno-Sakhalinst, according to its website.
Exxon has also significantly phased down its chemical and lubricant businesses in Russia, and limited sales to existing contractual commitments and essential products used in applications such as food preservation, agriculture and hygiene, the spokesperson said.
As MRC wrote previously, earlier this month, SEE, ExxonMobil, and Ahold Delhaize USA announced their collaboration on an advanced recycling initiative, the first of its kind in the US. The project recycles flexible plastics from the food supply chain and remakes them into new, certified circular food-grade packaging. The initiative is expected to begin this summer and scale over time.
We remind that in February, 2022, ExxonMobil and SABIC successful started up Gulf Coast Growth Ventures world-scale manufacturing facility in San Patricio County, Texas. The new facility will produce materials used in packaging, agricultural film, construction materials, clothing, and automotive coolants. The operation includes a 1.8 MM metric tpy ethane steam cracker, two polyethylene (PE) units capable of producing up to 1.3 MM metric tpy, and a monoethylene glycol (MEG) unit with a capacity of 1.1 MM metric tpy.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC''s ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,487,450 tonnes in 2021, up by 13% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 1,494.280 tonnes, up by 21% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whreas, shipments of PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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