Did a French company continue to sell jet fuel to Russia while Russia invaded Ukraine? This is according to an investigation by the French site lemonde.fr.
“In Russia, TotalEnergies does not only export gas to Europe, as it often says to justify its presence there. The French oil and gas giant and its local partner Novatek manage an oil field whose product, after being turned into kerosene, is used to fuel Russian fighter jets involved in the war in Ukraine,” they write in the publication.
“Terneftegaz, the company that manages the field, is owned 49% by TotalEnergies and 51% by Novatek.”
Thanks to information gathered by the NGO Global Witness and obtained from the financial database Refinitiv, held by the London Stock Exchange, Le Monde was able to trace the supply chain from the Termokarstovoye field in Siberia to two military air bases (Morozovskaya and Malshevo).
Each of them houses a squadron of fighter jets. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused these squadrons of harming the Ukrainian civilian population, including during the bombing of the Mariupol theater, which is estimated to have killed around 600 people, on March 16, 2022. A “war crime,” Amnesty International called the event .
TotalEnergies, unlike other major Western competitors, continued to hold its assets in Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite public criticism. The company claimed that it did not operate an infrastructure that supplied the Russian military with jet fuel and had no knowledge of potential jet fuel production by its business partners.
“The revelations – based on commercial transport data made available by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective – contradict TotalEnergies’ claims from last March that its joint venture operations are “completely unrelated to the conduct of military operations by Russia in Ukraine,” write the globalwitness website that was a partner for research.
“Among the targets for jet fuel refining in Omsk are bases of Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bombers, which began receiving deliveries days before the invasion. The pilots of these planes have been accused by human rights organizations and the government of Ukraine of indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, including a March 3 attack on Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, which reportedly killed 47 people, and regular bombing of the cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol.
When presented with supply chain data by Le Monde, TotalEnergies confirmed that all of the gas condensate produced by TerNefteGaz was sold to Novatek, accounting for 7% of the company’s marketed volumes. But she said she had no information about Novatek’s sales and had no control over the operational activities of Novatek, which is a completely separate company.
“Our analysis of supply chain data from Refinitiv shows that more than 40,000 tons of jet fuel were shipped from Omsk to Morozovsk and Voronezh between February and July – enough to fill the Su-34’s internal fuel tanks more than 3,000 times. The first shipment was received on February 22, two days before the start of the invasion, when none of the bases had received fuel from the refinery since 2017,” the publication continues.
‘The supply chain data is supported by high-resolution satellite images. A photo taken by the Maxar satellite on July 31 shows seven tank cars sitting atop a track at the Morozovsk Air Base. According to Refinitiv data, the train station in the city of Morozovsk, five kilometers away, received several jet fuel shipments involving the same number of cars in July, including one the day before the photo was taken.
The French president declined to comment on Le Monde’s publication and TotalEnergies’ investments when asked by Reuters for comment.
The French transport minister called for an investigation into the suspicions.