Technip Energies plunged on the stock market after an investigation by Le Monde into its activities in Russia

2023-10-19 16:24:00

A revelation which weighed heavily on the stock price of Technip Energies this Thursday, its stock having fallen up to 21% on the Paris Stock Exchange. According to a daily survey The world, the energy company would have been slow to exit a Russian gas project, strategic for it, despite the “ European sanctions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine ” Who ” required him to interrupt his participation ».

Technip Energies, the other French industrialist riding the LNG wave

« Technip Energies has acted, at all times, in compliance with the sanctions applicable to the Arctic LNG 2 project. », a project to build a natural gas liquefaction plant in western Siberia, Technip Energies immediately defended itself in a press release published during the day.

7 billion euro contract

The contract worth 7 billion euros for Technip Energies was signed in July 2019 to build a gigantic gas liquefaction plant with a view to exporting it in the form of LNG. The construction site is personally monitored by Vladimir Putin, who also visited it this summer. At that time, the Russian state aimed to increase maritime exports of Russian gas to compensate for the closure of gas pipelines to Europe.

For the year 2022 alone, the Arctic LNG 2 project represented a turnover of 1.4 billion euros for Technip, according to The world. The daily accuses the French energy group of not having slammed the door on the site as soon as the sanctions of April 2022 came into force. These “ prohibit explicitly exports to Russia of products and technologies used in the liquefaction of natural gas, and prohibits any technical, financial or logistical assistance for their use ».

Gas: Technip lands a colossal contract in Qatar

« Technip Energies had a little over a month to comply », writes the evening daily, which accuses him of having continued the delivery of construction parts for the LNG plant until October 2022, and to have transferred the headquarters of joint ventures created for the occasion, in the United Arab Emirates, where sanctions do not apply before handing them over on May 5, 2023. This was done in cooperation with the client because we mightn’t leave by slamming the door: we would have lost a lot of money. », justified a company executive at Monde.

In the wake of this publication, the share price of the engineering and services group fell up to 21% in this Thursday’s session before recovering to 13.75% at 5:30 p.m.

(With AFP)