A US priority in energy cooperation with Russia in the Arctic could be the revival of the joint project in the Kara Sea, Nikita Lipunov, a junior fellow at the MGIMO Institute for International Studies, told RIA Novosti.

Kirill Dmitriev, who heads the state-owned Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), said in an interview with Politico after the Russian-US talks in Saudi Arabia that the discussion focused on possible joint projects in the Arctic.

“Cooperation between Russia’s Rosneft and US ExxonMobil to develop deposits in the Kara Sea began in 2011. But in 2018 the Americans pulled out after the imposition of sanctions against Russia. The first priority energy project for the American side could be the relaunch of its joint project with Rosneft in the Kara Sea,” Lipunov said.

In March 2018, ExxonMobil announced its withdrawal from joint projects with Rosneft over US and EU sanctions against Russia. The US oil and gas corporation was involved or intended to get involved in joint offshore exploration and development projects in the Kara, Laptev, Chukchi, and Black seas. In August 2018, Rosneft announced that it had completed the acquisition of ExxonMobil’s shares after its withdrawal from joint projects in Russia over the sanctions.

ExxonMobil and Rosneft discovered the Pobeda oil and gas field (the East-Prinovozemelsky-1 license area) in the Kara Sea in 2014. Its total recoverable resources were estimated at 130 million tons of oil and 499.2 billion cubic meters of gas.