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France’s Total could ‘build bridges’ with Russia despite sanctions — CEO

Pouyanne said his company would continue to develop its cooperation with Russia

PARIS, February 6. /TASS/. French oil and gas giant Total managed to "build bridges" with Russia despite sanctions, its chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanne said in an interview with Le Monde.

"Sanctions are a corrupted system that damages people who have no other choice but to support their country," he said. "Sanctions eventially produce results which are directly opposite to those intended by their authors."

Pouyanne said his company would continue to develop its cooperation with Russia.

"The example of Yamal LNG has shown that together with Russia we can implement major projects worth $27 billion, without using the US dollar and fully in line with the sanctions regime," the Total chief continued. "We have managed to build bridges where walls used to be."

According to French business paper, Les Echos, Yamal LNG is among the world’s biggest projects to produce liquefied natural gas. Due to the US sanctions against Russia, the partners had to carry it out without US dollars - Total and its partners worked with Russian, European and Chinese banks instead.

The shareholders of Yamal LNG are: Novatek (50.1%), Total (20%), CNPC (20%) and the Silk Road Fund (9.9%). Yamal LNG will become Novatek’s first LNG plant. The project is being implemented on the Yamal peninsula in Russia Arctic region. It will be implemented in three stages, each with the capacity of 5.5 mln tonnes a year. Now the first stage has been completed. The second and the third one will be put into operation in 2018-2019.