Exxon Held Secret Talks With Rosneft About Going Back to Russia

Resuming the business would mark a dramatic rapprochement after Exxon's messy breakup with Moscow following Ukraine attack

- Joe Wallace, Costas Paris, Alex Leary & Collin Eaton

After huddling with President Trump in Alaska, President Vladimir Putin told reporters Russia and the U.S. could do more business together—for example, between their Pacific coastlines. "We look forward to dealing," Trump replied.

What the two leaders didn't say: Behind closed doors, their countries' biggest energy companies had already sketched out a road map to going back into business, pumping oil-and-gas fields off Russia's far-east coast.

In secret talks with Russia's biggest state energy company this year, a senior Exxon Mobil executive discussed returning to the massive Sakhalin project if the two governments gave the green light as part of a Ukraine peace process, said people familiar with the discussions.

Such is the sensitivity that only a handful of people at Exxon knew the talks had taken place. One of the U.S. oil major's top executives, Senior Vice President Neil Chapman, led the talks on the Exxon side.

Under the Biden and Trump administrations, Exxon and other companies have had U.S. permission and licenses from the Treasury Department to hold talks about stranded assets with Russian counterparts, one of the people familiar with the discussions said. The first round of negotiations took place shortly after Exxon's exit from Russia in 2022.

In parallel, Exxon executives have asked the U.S. government for support if the company goes back to Russia, and received a sympathetic hearing, said a senior administration official. CEO Darren Woods discussed Exxon's possible return with Trump at the White House in recent weeks.

Resuming business in Russia would mark a dramatic rapprochement after Exxon's messy breakup with Moscow when Putin attacked Ukraine in 2022. The West's biggest oil producer dived deeper into Russia than most other companies after the fall of the Soviet Union. Its retreat after the invasion was correspondingly more acrimonious.