TotalEnergies responds to ‘complicity in war crimes’ accusations by promising to phase out Russian oil purchases

French oil and gas supermajor TotalEnergies said today it will “no longer enter into or renew contracts to purchase Russian oil and petroleum products” because of the deteriorating situation in Ukraine.

PHOTO: TotalEnergies joins other European oil and gas firms such as Shell, Equinor and Varo Energy in halting or winding down purchases of Russian oil. Getty Images

While it ringfences imports of Russian gas as key to Europe’s energy supply – and not covered by any EU-wide sanctions – TotalEnergies now follows several other European oil and gas firms in phasing out Russian oil imports “as soon as possible.”

The firm says that it will comply with European energy sanctions should they be expanded to include Russian oil and gas imports, and promises to gradually suspend its activities in Russia.

Faced with “serious and unfounded accusations of ‘complicity in war crimes’” from French NGOs that have threaten legal action under French law, TotalEnergies stresses that it does not operate any oil, gas and LNG fields or plants in Russia, and will not invest in development of any more energy projects in Russia.

It will, however, remain a minority owner in several non-state-owned Russian energy firms. These are mostly gas related and include gas producer Novatek, the Yamal LNG plant and liquefaction project, the Arctic LNG 2 liquefaction train project, and oil and gas refinery TerNefteGaz.

“Contrary to oil, it is apparent that Europe's gas logistics capacities make it difficult to refrain from importing Russian gas in the next two to three years without impacting the continent's energy supply,” it said in a statement today.

TotalEnergies owns the majority of the Leuna refinery in eastern Germany, which is supplied directly with Russian crude oil through the Druzhba pipeline. It says these flows will be phased out when term contracts for purchase of Russian crude and oil products expire by the end of the year.

Without specifying which oil products, it says Russian oil imports can be replaced to some extent with imports from Poland.

Russian gasoil is a key product flowing to Europe in addition to crude oil, and gasoil is currently short in Europe, it says. Gasoil replacements can come from Saudi Arabia’s Satorp refinery and other refineries outside Europe.