The material was published shortly after the launch of the project’s first phase. On September 5, Vladimir Putin gave the start to the shipment of the first oil from “Vostok Oil” and called it “a landmark event for the Arctic region, and for all of Russia”; Igor Sechin claims that all equipment used in the project is produced in Russia, and the total amount of investment, according to Rosneft, has reached 4 trillion rubles. Since January 2025, “Vostok Oil” has been under blocking U.S. sanctions, and restrictions were imposed at the same time on the project operator “RN-Vankor” and the director of “Vostok Oil”, Vladimir Chernov.
According to the investigation, the Russian business of the American Baker Hughes, after being sold to management, operates under the name “OFS Technologies”. From 2023 to mid-2026, this company received more than 13.6 billion rubles on projects with Rosneft, with part of the payments made under contracts that Baker Hughes had signed before leaving Russia.
Baker Hughes said that it does not control “OFS Technologies”, does not receive any economic benefit from its contracts with Rosneft or “Vostok Oil”, and does not supply these companies with equipment, technology or services in violation of sanctions and export control rules. “OFS Technologies” did not respond to the investigators’ request, and the former Russian Halliburton subsidiary — LLC “Burservice” — received contracts worth more than 8 billion rubles from “Vostok Oil” from the end of 2023 to spring 2026.
Weatherford and Schlumberger, now SLB, announced after the start of the war that they were suspending new investments and supplies to Russia, but entities linked to them continued to operate in the country. Weatherford’s subsidiary in Russia received three payments from “Vostok Oil” totaling 58 million rubles from May 2022 to February 2023 for work on one of the wells, and in 2026 it transferred another 8 million rubles in advance to the project under a new contract.
Entities linked to SLB imported high-tech equipment worth more than 5.7 billion rubles into Russia from January 2024 through the end of 2025, mainly from China and India. As the investigators note, SLB brands almost disappeared from customs declarations, and the M-I SWACO brand stopped being listed for shipments of specialized chemicals. SLB and the company did not respond to the investigators’ questions.
In October 2023, “Vostok Oil” signed a direct contract with the Moscow branch of the Panamanian Schlumberger Logelco for technical support of directional drilling, and work under it, according to the investigation, continued until 2026. More than 20% of “Bashneftegeofizika”, which carries out exploration on the project’s sites, belongs to Schlumberger Investment Services B. V., and the company itself received almost 13 billion rubles on “Vostok Oil” projects for 2021–2025.
Another major contractor for the project is LLC “Taimyr Invest”: at the beginning of 2026, Marat Kabayev acquired 25% of the company, and after the deal he said that he decided to enter the company’s capital after a conversation with the aide to the President of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev. According to documents, from 2024 to 2026 the company received less than 200 million rubles from LLC “Vostok Oil”, while its main source of income became “Sinarastroykomplekt”, the largest private contractor for the megaproject, linked to billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky; it received almost 900 billion rubles from “Vostok Oil” from June 2021 to April 2026 and supplies the project with metal products, including pipes.
Following audits for 2023 and 2024, the Federal Tax Service assessed additional taxes of more than 3 billion rubles and about 800 million rubles in fines against “Taimyr Invest”. Court documents show that the company reduced taxable profit, including through transactions with organizations that the Federal Tax Service considered to have the characteristics of shell companies; in June 2026, the court upheld an additional 1.5 billion rubles in profit tax from one audit, canceling a 154 million ruble fine, and in another case confirmed 1.6 billion rubles in taxes and a 646 million ruble fine, after which “Taimyr Invest” appealed both decisions.
Sources
