French oil and gas company TotalEnergies has divested its stake in Russian company Terneftegaz, which operates the Siberian gas field Termokarstovoye, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Terneftegaz is a joint venture between TotalEnergies and Russian company Novatek, which is the second largest producer of natural gas in Russia. The French oil outfit has sold its 49% stake to Novatek, which now owns 100% of Terneftegaz.

The divestment follows a series of critical articles by French newspaper Le Monde on TotalEnergies’ involvement in Russia.

The French media published a number of stories on TotalEnergies’ income from the sale of gas condensate sourced from the Russian gas field, which is subsequently used to produce jet fuel. This fuel is used by Russian combat aircraft deployed in the war in Ukraine, the media reports.

Among other things, Le Monde writes that some of the fuel produced using gas condensate from the Termokarstovoye field has been supplied to a Russian air base, from which many of the air raids against the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol are executed.

As opposed to many other Western companies, TotalEnergies has been reluctant to withdraw from Russia. Upon unveiling the agreement on the divestment Friday, the company did not provide any information on what will happen with the 19% stake in Russian Novatek that TotalEnergies owns, writes Reuters.

As the articles trickled out throughout the week, the French government decided to react.

”This is an extremely serious subject, so it needs to be verified whether, voluntarily or involuntarily, there has been a bypass of either the sanctions or the energy that a company, French or other, has produced,” French Minister of Transport Clement Beaune stated Thursday, according to Reuters.

TotalEnergies has dismissed the allegations, stating that the aircraft fuel produced from the gas condensate produced from the gas field is exclusively exported out of Russia and thus not used to fuel Russian fighter jets.

Moreover, TotalEnergies reported Friday that the divestment of the stake in Terneftegaz is not a consequence of the past week’s critical articles, but that the transaction has been underway since July and was only just approved on Aug. 25 - the day after Le Monde’s article was published, writes Reuters.

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