Oil for the Inner Circle

Who profits from Vostok Oil — Rosneft’s largest project in the Arctic

On September 5, Rosneft launched the first phase of Vostok Oil. In preparation for the launch, the company built 790 kilometers of pipeline and what has been described as the “northernmost port in the world”. Total investment in the project’s development is estimated at 11.8 trillion rubles.

Arctida and the investigative project Systema identified who is making money from Vostok Oil. Among them are an alleged relative of Vladimir Putin, a Forbes-listed billionaire, and companies linked to Western oilfield services corporations.

Sechin’s General Contractor

In late 2024, Igor Sechin spent almost an hour seeking to convince participants at the Eurasian Economic Forum in the UAE that predictions of an imminent move away from oil and gas had proved premature. He described the Arctic as the main “storehouse of energy resources.” The Rosneft CEO did not mention Vostok Oil himself, but another participant in the discussion, Dmitry Pumpyansky, did. Introduced by Sechin as a board member of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs — an association also described as an “oligarchs’ trade union” — the billionaire said that Vostok Oil would provide more than enough hydrocarbons not only for Russia but for many other countries as well.

Several years earlier, Pumpyansky, a longtime fixture on the Forbes list, had become the general contractor for Rosneft’s flagship project and secured a contract covering 100% of Vostok Oil’s metal-product requirements — primarily pipes made by his companies. The major order came at an opportune time: Gazprom was cutting its investment program, and Russian pipe manufacturers were operating below capacity.

Pumpyansky’s ties to Sechin date back to at least the late 2000s. The businessman joined a government commission on the metals industry headed by Sechin, then a deputy prime minister, and a year later joined the organizing committee for the inaugural INNOPROM industrial exhibition in the Urals, which Sechin also oversaw. Pumpyansky also repeatedly took part in meetings with Hugo Chávez; Sechin was responsible for Russia’s contacts with the Venezuelan leader.

By the early 2010s, the relationship between the then deputy prime minister and the metals magnate had become visible enough that Gazeta.Ru sources explicitly

referred to Pumpyansky as “Sechin’s man.”

When Sechin moved to Rosneft, those ties took on a tangible commercial dimension. In the mid-2010s, the state-controlled company signed a long-term contract with Pumpyansky for the supply of more than 3.5 million tonnes of pipe. The orders brought Pumpyansky more than 200 billion rubles, second place in Forbes Russia’s 2018 ranking of the biggest beneficiaries of state contracts, and made Rosneft the largest customer of his businesses.

Pumpyansky and Sechin have other connections as well. In late 2018, two Germans — Matthias Warnig and Thomas Hendel — invested in the billionaire’s business. Warnig, a former Stasi officer and longtime acquaintance of Vladimir Putin, was a member of Rosneft’s leadership. Hendel had served as Rosneft’s chief of administration and an adviser to Sechin.

Their most significant shared project, however, was Vostok Oil. According to media reports, Sinarastroykomplekt, a company linked to the billionaire, became a Rosneft contractor after winning a tender, although we were unable to verify this information from open sources.

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According to our calculations, between June 2021 and April 2026, Sinarastroykomplekt received almost 900 billion rubles under contracts with Vostok Oil, making it the project’s largest private contractor. The company’s ties with Rosneft extends beyond the megaproject: court records show that Sinarastroykomplekt also works with other Rosneft subsidiaries. Since 2021, Sinarastroykomplekt has paid its shareholders 56 billion rubles in dividends.

Neither Sinara Group, Sinarastroykomplekt’s parent group, nor Ural Federal University, whose supervisory board is chaired by Pumpyansky, responded to requests for comment from Arctida and Systema. Rosneft also declined to answer questions about its contractors, saying that the state-controlled company’s standards do not allow it to discuss its production and commercial activities publicly. Rosneft described Vostok Oil as “a project of key importance to global energy” and said that the principal purpose of the request for comment was “to exert pressure on the project’s partners and participants.”

Which other Vostok Oil contractor is Pumpyansky linked to?

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Pumpyansky was sanctioned by Western countries and was forced to relinquish beneficial ownership of his businesses. Control of the companies, however, passed to executives from businesses formerly associated with Pumpyansky, while the Russian authorities continued to treat him as their beneficiary. The billionaire still regularly takes part in meetings with Vladimir Putin, and in late 2024 he joined the supervisory board of the Volleyball Federation of Russia. The federation’s board has for years been chaired by presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev, while Igor Sechin has served as its deputy chairman since 2009.

Volleyball is not the only connection among Patrushev, Sechin, and Pumpyansky. Those connections also lead to another Vostok Oil contractor whose co-owners include Marat Kabaev, an alleged relative of Vladimir Putin.

A Family Stake

“I’m interested in exploring new areas,” Marat Kabaev told TASS in March 2026. The state news agency described him as a well-known footballer, coach, and public figure. Kabaev is also known as the father of Alina Kabaeva, who is believed to be Vladimir Putin’s partner and the mother of his children. In the interview, Kabaev also discussed business: several weeks earlier, he had acquired a 25% stake in Taimyr Invest, a major logistics company providing services at Rosneft sites.

Who else owns Taimyr Invest?

The same TASS interview states that the company transports cargo for Vostok Oil. According to our data, Kabaev’s company does indeed receive money from a Rosneft subsidiary. But this business accounts for a relatively small share of Taimyr Invest’s overall turnover: between 2024 and 2026, the company received less than 200 million rubles in transfers from Vostok Oil LLC, while its annual revenue runs into the tens of billions of rubles.

The key to understanding where most of Taimyr Invest’s money comes from lies in court records. They show that the company’s key customer is Sinarastroykomplekt, Vostok Oil’s general contractor linked to Pumpyansky.

The same proceedings also shed light on how Taimyr Invest conducts its business. According to court documents, while working on the megaproject, the company, which says it “takes pride in its reputation,” underpaid taxes, including through transactions with organizations that “displayed all the hallmarks of fly-by-night companies.” Following two audits conducted in 2024 and 2025, the tax authorities assessed Taimyr Invest more than three billion rubles in additional taxes and another 800 million rubles in penalties.

Notably, Kabaev became one of Taimyr Invest’s owners only after these multibillion-ruble tax claims had been made. In the interview, he described his role as being to “help the partners build a strong, socially oriented company.” Taimyr Invest did not respond to a request for comment.

TASS describes Taimyr Invest as one of the oldest companies in the market, operating since 2009. Court records, however, indicate that it did not begin active operations until the second quarter of 2023. Until 2022, the company was called Kashirskie Prostory and was in the business of selling plots of land in the Moscow Region. After the name change, oil and gas extraction services were added to its registered business activities, and Marat Tyakin became its chief executive. Kabaev said the company was “very lucky with its CEO,” calling him “a true professional in his field” and “a man committed to the interests of the state.”

According to leaked data, until at least 2017 the future head of Taimyr Invest worked as chief mechanic at the Perm Electrotechnical Plant. A year later, he was registered as self-employed, with income of 80,000 rubles, unsuccessfully applied for a 10,000-ruble microloan, and was also listed on a bank “stop list.”

It is unclear when Tyakin’s fortunes changed, but in late 2022 he was on the same flight to Norilsk as Rosneft employees, and just a few months later he became head of Taimyr Invest.

After that, he appeared at meetings with regional officials, attended a patriotic event attended by Putin, and sent drones to the Russian military.

His deputy at Taimyr Invest was Andrei Trenin, a former Rosneft employee who had also worked at RN-Vankor, the operator of Vostok Oil. Tyakin’s business partners in another venture included the two German businessmen mentioned earlier, Matthias Warnig and Thomas Hendel, both of whom also had ties to the state-controlled oil company.

Under Tyakin, Taimyr Invest grew into a group of companies, which also includes the cargo fleet operator Stevedore Service, logistics company Taimyr Engineering, and the Chelyabinsk Steel Structures Plant, which had previously formed part of Pumpyansky’s business empire. According to the group’s website, it employs more than 4,800 people. Its non-core activities include supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine and sponsoring a football club in Russian-occupied Luhansk.

“Sport is a priority for the group,” states one of the group’s posts, illustrated with a photograph of Nikolai Patrushev on a volleyball court. Patrushev chairs the supervisory board of the Volleyball Federation of Russia, which also includes Sechin and Pumpyansky. In January 2025, the federation held its traditional tournament in St. Petersburg, attended by both Patrushev and Tyakin. A year later, Kabaev himself said that it was after a conversation with Patrushev that he decided to acquire a stake in Taimyr Invest.

No Such Thing as an Ex

In the spring of 2014, St. Petersburg basketball club Spartak faced an existential threat: its longtime sponsor, Novatek, refused to renew its contract for the following season. Spartak president Alexander Uritsky attributed the sponsor’s firm stance to a conflict between the club’s former management and Sergei Ivanov — a former head of the Presidential Administration and one of Putin’s closest associates. Letters to Vladimir Putin and the governor of St. Petersburg did not help. Spartak was left “without a kopeck” and was soon dissolved.

Uritsky fared better in business, becoming one of Vostok Oil’s largest contractors. In 2022, he became the sole owner of Unicom-M, a company involved in the modernization of Norilsk Airport. Rosneft uses the airport to transport oil workers to Vostok Oil and is financing its reconstruction.

Another Uritsky company, AMD-Capital, works with RN-Vankor. According to our calculations, between 2022 and mid-2026, Uritsky’s companies received 44.6 billion rubles under Rosneft contracts.

Both companies owned by the former Spartak president are headed by Stepan Zhdanov, who, according to leaked data, was deputy CEO of RN-Vankor as far backy as 2021. He later

served as acting head

of the company for a time and, in 2024, was

awarded

the Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” First Class, by Putin alongside a long list of Rosneft employees.

There is also a Rosneft connection in Uritsky’s own career: from 2021 through at least 2026, he worked at O1 Properties, a company journalists had linked to Rosneft’s interests. Uritsky did not respond to questions from Arctida and Systema sent to him by email and via a messaging app. We were unable to find contact information for his companies.

What other ties does Uritsky have to Rosneft?

Another significant Vostok Oil contractor is the Ural-Siberian Industrial Company (USPK). It supplied and serviced drilling rigs for the megaproject, bringing the company almost 25 billion rubles between 2021 and 2026.

In July 2026, USPK marked its 21st anniversary. It names the Balashov family as its founders and describes its own Taimyr-R1 Arctic drilling rig as a source of “pride.” Financial records in our possession, however, show that Vostok Oil favors another model: the Taimyr-01. USPK patented the rig in 2018, and one of the two inventors listed on the patent, alongside Balashov, has exactly the same full name as Eduard Khudainatov — the former head of Rosneft whom Sechin succeeded as president of the company and whom Sechin has called his friend. Khudainatov later built his own oil empire, some of whose assets were acquired by Rosneft. They became part of Vostok Oil, after which Khudainatov was described as a billionaire and was alleged to be the nominee owner of Putin’s superyacht. Neither USPK nor Khudainatov’s companies responded to requests for comment from Arctida and Systema.

There is another link between USPK and Rosneft. The company’s beneficial owner is Dmitry Skobelev. His brother Alexander, while Khudainatov headed Rosneft, oversaw capital construction at the company as vice president; before that, he headed Vankorneft, which later became part of Vostok Oil.

In Place of the West

After the start of the full-scale war, Vostok Oil came under sanctions pressure: Rosneft’s flagship project lost access to Western investment and much of the technology supplied by Western companies. Alternative ways had to be found to make up for those losses.

Drilling in permafrost and building Arctic infrastructure are among the most technologically demanding tasks in the oil industry. Before 2022, four international oilfield services giants — Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford, and Schlumberger — provided expertise and capabilities that Russian companies lacked. Formally, nothing prevented them from participating in Vostok Oil: the sanctions imposed in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea prohibited the supply of technology for Arctic offshore oil production and deepwater projects, but Vostok Oil is an onshore project and therefore did not fall under those restrictions.

After February 2022, Western oilfield services companies announced that they were partially or completely suspending operations in Russia. Sanctions around the project itself tightened later: on January 10, 2025, the United States imposed blocking sanctions on Vostok Oil operator RN-Vankor and affiliated entities as part of a sweeping package targeting Russia’s oil and gas sector. On February 27 of the same year, a ban on U.S. companies providing petroleum services in Russia came into effect.

In response to requests for comment from Arctida and Systema, Rosneft called the sanctions “illegal” and “unfounded,” saying that the restrictions “directly harm those who imposed them.” The state-controlled company said that it had “learned to operate under various restrictions” and to find “the necessary solutions.” A Rosneft representative also said that the company’s activities did not violate any international laws or rules and that all equipment used at Vostok Oil was entirely “domestically produced.”

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“Our most important task is to support our partners and provide high-tech, high-quality and reliable services,” David Gadzhimirzaev, president of OFS Technologies, said in May 2023. He had previously spent 15 years at Baker Hughes. In the summer of 2022, the U.S. corporation announced that it would sell its Russian business to local management. Putin approved the deal, after which Baker Hughes’ Russian assets were transferred to OFS Technologies.

We have no data indicating that OFS Technologies continued to import Baker Hughes-related equipment into Russia after 2025. Nevertheless, the company that took over Baker Hughes’s Russian oilfield services business remains a major Rosneft contractor: from 2023 through mid-2026, OFS Technologies received more than 13.6 billion rubles from projects involving Rosneft. Some of those payments were made under contracts signed with Baker Hughes before it exited Russia.

A Baker Hughes representative said the company does not control the activities of OFS Technologies, derives no economic benefit from OFS Technologies’ contracts with Rosneft or Vostok Oil, and does not supply equipment or technology, or provide services to those projects in violation of applicable sanctions or export controls. OFS OFS Technologies did not respond to a request for comment from Arctida and Systema.

Halliburton similarly left Russia, selling its Russian operations to a local management team made up of former Halliburton employees. From late 2023 through spring 2026, BurService LLC, which took over Halliburton’s former Russian business, received more than 8 billion rubles under Vostok Oil contracts. Neither Halliburton nor BurService responded to requests for comment from Arctida and Systema.

Weatherford and Schlumberger, now known as SLB, took a less sweeping approach: they suspended new investment and shipments to Russia. Companies affiliated with them, however, continued operating in the country and, as our investigation shows, working with Vostok Oil.

Weatherford’s Russian subsidiary indicated in its 2022 financial statements that it intended to continue operating in Russia. Vostok Oil’s financial records support this: between May 2022 and February 2023, Weatherford’s Russian subsidiary received three payments totaling 58 million rubles for work on one of the project’s wells.

The same records suggest that the relationship may have continued into 2026: in March 2026, the subsidiary paid Vostok Oil an advance of 8 million rubles for unspecified goods under a contract signed that month.

We were unable to establish what the contract covered. Weatherford did not respond to a request for comment from Arctida and Systema.

The Financial Times previously reported on the continued operation in Russia of entities linked to Schlumberger. According to the FT, between August and December 2023 these entities imported $17.5 million worth of equipment into Russia, primarily from China and India. Goods worth $2.2 million were declared to customs as having been manufactured by SLB and its subsidiaries. SLB declined the FT’s request for comment, but the newspaper quoted a person “close to the company” as saying that the imports did not come “from an SLB facility” and were therefore “consistent with SLB’s public statements and international sanctions.”

According to our data, SLB-linked entities continued importing equipment into Russia after 2023. An analysis of customs declarations shows that from January 2024 through 2025, legal entities affiliated with SLB imported high-tech equipment worth more than 5.7 billion rubles, primarily of Chinese and Indian origin. At the same time, brands associated with SLB largely disappeared from customs declarations. For example, references to the SLB–M-I SWACO brand disappeared from declarations covering specialized chemicals imported from India, even though the characteristics of the substances remained close to Schlumberger’s original formulations. References to SLB remained in customs declarations only in isolated cases. One example was a shipment of steel from China whose customs declaration retained the SLB GEMS marking — apparently denoting an internal Schlumberger technical standard.

What SLB entities imported

Entities linked to SLB continue to provide oilfield services to Vostok Oil. According to our data, in October 2023 Vostok Oil signed a direct contract with the Moscow branch of Panama-registered Schlumberger Logelco. The contract covered technical support for directional drilling at one of the sites within Rosneft’s megaproject. Vostok Oil financial records show that work and payments under the contract continued into 2026.

Schlumberger Investment Services B.V., a Netherlands-based company which has been associated with Schlumberger, owns a stake of more than 20% in Bashneftegeofizika, which conducts exploration at sites within Rosneft’s megaproject and describes itself as Russia’s largest oilfield services company, with a history spanning more than 85 years. Between 2021 and 2025, Bashneftegeofizika received almost 13 billion rubles under Vostok Oil contracts.

After the start of the full-scale war, Bashneftegeofizika also began supporting the Russian military, supplying troops with vehicles and equipment. Rustem Adiev, who headed the company, has received awards from Putin, the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, and regional authorities, including an award “for personal participation in carrying out tasks in the special military operation zone.”

Neither SLB nor Bashneftegeofizika responded to requests for comment from Arctida and Systema.

Cover photo by SerTiKo/Depositphotos