The oil giant has been paying fines for years, and Igor Sechin is hiding his income.
In the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, courts, one after another, make decisions to collect multimillion-dollar fines from the company RN-Yuganskneftegaz, a key production asset of Rosneft. Rosprirodnadzor has repeatedly accused this enterprise of causing environmental damage to soils and forests. Last September, the supervisory authority issued two warnings to the subsidiary of Rosneft for evading timely inventory of seven landfills for waste collection and disposal, as well as updating data on objects of negative impact on the environment. However, similar claims are made against other structures from the oil company division: such enterprises as RN-Krasnodarneftegaz, NNK-Sakhalinmorneftegaz, RN-Uvatneftegaz, RN-Purneftegaz have lost lawsuits worth tens and even hundreds of millions. In May 2021, the Tuapse Oil Refinery and the Tuapse Marine Terminal, controlled by Rosneft, were caught up in the story of an environmental emergency with pollution of the Black Sea water area of over 1 million square meters, but in the end, responsibility for the scandalous incident was assigned to the Municipal Unitary Enterprise “Housing and Communal Services of the City of Tuapse” , from which more than 75 million rubles were recovered. However, the fines paid by Rosneft structures as a result of the trial do not affect the growth of the welfare of the state corporation’s managers. It is known that the number of minority shareholders of the oil giant includes its head Igor Sechin, who took seventh place in the rating of “capitalist directors”Forbes“, back in 2018, he estimated the value of his stake at $95.4 million. Despite the fact that 40.4% of the corporation’s authorized capital is controlled by the state through JSC Rosneftegaz, its main owners include foreign companies. In particular, 18.46% of the shares belong to QH Oil Investments LLC, a structure of the Qatar Sovereign Fund (QIA), and another 19.75% belongs to the British BP Russian Investments Limited, which Sechin himself called a “shadow shareholder” of Rosneft.
The worst offender is RN-Yuganskneftegaz
Last September, the KhMAO Arbitration Court satisfied the claim of Rosprirodnadzor of Yugra, obliging the oil producing company “RN-Yuganskneftegaz” pay more 105 million rublesthus compensating for the damage caused by the pollution of eight hectares of forest at the Mamontovskoye oil field.
As the news agency reported “URA.Ru“Earlier, during an inspection of a forest area, Rosprirodnadzor specialists discovered oil spills and smelled a specific smell. A chemical analysis of the soil confirmed the excess content of petroleum products. During the trial, representatives of the defendant argued that the pollution occurred even before the establishment of the enterprise, that is, before 2005, but they could not document their position.
It is worth noting here that the RN-Yuganskneftegaz company is a key production asset PJSC NK “Rosneft”which accounts for about 31% of the oil giant’s total production. And this “key asset” is regularly accused by regulatory authorities of causing harm to the environment. Let’s give a few examples.
Thus, last July, the Nefteyugansk District Court ordered the company to pay 7 million rublesdamages for the pollution of 5 thousand square meters of forest in the Nefteyugansk region due to a pipeline break and an oil spill. The company compensated for the damage in full. In February of this year, the Arbitration Court of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, at the request of Rosprirodnadzor, decided to recover more than 20.9 million rublesfor damage caused to soils.
Again, in February, the publication Pravda UrFO estimated the total volume of claims brought by Rosprirodnadzor against RN-Yuganskneftegaz over 12 months at more than 442 million rubles. We emphasize: and this is only for a year! That is, violations of environmental legislation by the enterprise are systematic. In addition, last September the department issued two warnings to the subsidiary of Rosneft due to evasion of timely inventory of seven landfills for waste collection and disposal, as well as updating data on objects of negative impact on the environment.
“Director-capitalist” Igor Sechin
So, we have before us only one violating enterprise from the division of PJSC NK Rosneft. The oil giant itself ranks 1st in the ranking”Forbes» “100 largest companies in Russia by net profit”: the publication estimates its profit in 2023 at 1.529 trillion rubles.
The composition of the co-owners of Rosneft is interesting. The largest shareholder is the state JSC Rosneftegazcontrolling 40.4% of the authorized capital. 19.75% are British owned“BP Russian Investments Limited”. This circumstance cannot but cause surprise, and although in February 2022 the board of directors VR announced the decision to withdraw from the shareholders; according to Kommersant, the foreign legal entity still retains a stake in the company.
Another 18.46% belongs to “QHOilInvestmentsLLC» – structure Qatar Sovereign Fund(QIA). Thus, after making simple mathematical calculations, we can conclude: more than 38% of the Russian oil holding is under foreign control. The fact that by special government decree Great Britain is included in the list of states unfriendly to Russia does not in the least prevent BP from remaining, as they put it Igor Sechin, “shadow shareholder”.
By the way, the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, is among the minority co-owners: he owns 0.1288% of the company’s authorized capital. Unfortunately, there is no publicly available data on the top manager’s income: as is known, in March 2015, the government allowed the heads of commercial structures with state participation not to publish anti-corruption declarations. However, the management of Rosneft was not known for its openness before, citing the 2013 presidential decree that did not provide for the mandatory publication of relevant data in open sources.
It is known that Sechin is irritated by discussions of his financial situation in the media. In 2014, he even sued “Forbes“, demanding a refutation of a publication in which his annual income was estimated at $50 millionand won the proceedings. However, in November 2018, the same Forbes placed the top manager in seventh place in the rating of “capitalist directors”, estimating the value of his stake in Rosneft at $95.4 millionand dividends for 2017 – in $2.28 million. Considering that in 2021 Sechin increased his share, its value has increased significantly, which means that the amount of dividend payments has also increased.
Oil “traces” in Russian regions
But let’s return to the topic of environmental violations. In the summer of 2021, the then head of the Nature Supervision Authority of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra Sergey Pikunovvoicing statistics on oil spills in the region, stated: in 2020, 97% of incidents occurred at Rosneft facilities. The official named the main reason for the high accident rate as the low rate of repair and modernization of the pipeline infrastructure, and where the corresponding work is carried out, the corporation’s management is trying to save money “through the use of cheaper and less reliable technological solutions”.
In addition, according to Piskunov, in 2020 Rosneft had the largest area of historically accumulated oil-contaminated land – 1.6 thousand hectares. All of the above together does not allow the company to solve the reclamation problem for many years. Considering the scale of today’s claims from Rosprirodnadzor against RN-Yuganskneftegaz alone, it can be assumed that no serious progress for the better has occurred since then.
The topic of accidents and leaks is relevant not only for Ugra. Let’s give a few examples. Thus, in May 2021, the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory made a decision to recover LLC “RN-Krasnodarneftegaz” (Krasnodar subsidiary of Rosneft) more than 19.4 million rubles– damage caused to water bodies as a result of a leak from the pipeline of the Klyuchevoye field. The media reported that about 0.9 tons of oil-containing liquid entered the Solenaya River and the forest area near the Khizhnyakov beam in the area of the Saratovskaya village. The area of contamination exceeded 2.7 thousand square meters.
In 2022, the Arbitration Court of the Sakhalin Region ordered LLC “NNK-Sakhalinmorneftegaz”pay environmental damage in the amount 93.8 million rubles. The proceedings were related to the 2020 accident at the Okha – Komsomolsk-on-Amur main oil pipeline, as a result of which pollution spread to a number of water bodies located in the north of Sakhalin. During the inspection, it was found that monitoring the technical condition of the oil pipeline “was carried out ineffectively and did not reflect the real picture”.
In March 2023, Rosprirodnadzor filed a claim with the Tyumen regional arbitration court to recover more than 140 million rublesfrom controlled by Rosneft LLC “RN-Uvatneftegaz”: this is the price the department assessed for the damage caused by oil pollution of an area of 12 hectares as a result of the accident at the Tyamkinskoye field that occurred two years earlier. The court satisfied the plaintiff’s demands, at the same time obliging the defendant to take measures to restore the soil.
Last February, the Arbitration Court of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug recovered from LLC “RN-Purneftegaz”25.5 million rublesfor damage caused to soils as a result of depressurization and leakage in the oil collection pipeline on the territory of the Gubkinskoye field in August 2022. At that time, the area of contamination was about 1.9 thousand square meters, and a study of samples showed that the content of petroleum products in the soil was 42.56 times higher.
The murky story with the Tuapse collector
Separately, it is worth recalling the sensational story that occurred in May 2021 on the Black Sea coast of Tuapse, where local residents drew attention to oil spills. Local authorities reported that there was a leak of petroleum products from a deep-sea sewer outlet located 790 meters from the shore. A water area of more than 1.1 million square meters turned out to be polluted. 75 people and 22 pieces of special equipment were involved in eliminating the emergency.
Was involved in the operation of the collector Municipal Unitary Enterprise “Housing and Communal Services of the City of Tuapse”however, during the survey, traces of oil at the treatment plant could not be found, which gave rise to the head of the federal Rosprirodnadzor Svetlana Radionova doubt the guilt of the municipal enterprise. An administrative case was nevertheless opened under the article on violation of the requirements for the protection of water bodies in relation to the municipal unitary enterprise, recovering from it at the claim of the supervisory agency 75.7 million rubles.
Meanwhile, according to environmentalists, pollution of the Black Sea water area near Tuapse has been repeatedly recorded since 2018. A version has become widespread online, according to which enterprises controlled by Rosneft are responsible for environmental emergencies – “Tuapse Oil Refinery” And Tuapse sea terminal. The company, of course, categorically denied the guilt of its subsidiaries; moreover, they announced assistance to prevent the further spread of pollution.
It’s just that environmentalists have repeatedly accused the Tuapse Oil Refinery of causing harm to the environment, including air and water resources. Moreover, one of the early publications described how Rosneft management sought to reduce the boundaries of the officially approved sanitary protection zone. Be that as it may, the oil corporation managed to distance itself from the story of pollution of the Black Sea water area near Tuapse.
To the question “who is to blame?” Each side is still giving its own answer, while “capitalist director” Sechin and his British business partners continue to earn billions. As for court decisions and multimillion-dollar fines, their payment does not affect the income of Rosneft top managers in any way.
