Official website of the President of Russia

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Tillerson, I am very happy to see you.

This is already our second meeting in a short span of time, and there is a good explanation for this: increasingly close relations are being forged between your company and Russian market players.

Just now, you signed documents on working jointly with Rosneft on hard-to-recover oil reserves and the continental shelf. This is the best proof that economic relations between the United States and Russia are continuing to develop.

We very much expect that our collaboration will benefit the global energy market, both companies, and our economies. I think that within the difficult conditions of the world economy, this is a good signal that all the market players in a wide range of economic sectors can feel confident.

Welcome.

ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson: Thank you, Mr President, for those warm remarks and your welcome. I also appreciate very much your attending today the signing of our two agreements.

As you point out, these two agreements represent continued progress in our very broad strategic partnership between Rosneft and ExxonMobil. It is important progress and substantive progress, and I’m pleased that you were here to be part of the signing today, and very much appreciate the strong support and encouragement you have provided to our partnership.

I agree, as you point out, that nothing strengthens relationships between countries better than business enterprise. And these agreements will serve to strengthen our relationship between our two countries and obviously our two companies.

We are very proud of our partnership. We look forward to bringing what we have to offer, our technical expertise to Russia, but also continuing to learn from Rosneft about Russian resources, techniques that are used here that are successful. It will be a very strong partnership.

Vladimir Putin: How do you view cooperation to develop the technological centre in St Petersburg?

Rex Tillerson: Well, I’m very excited about the establishment of the Arctic Research Centre. ExxonMobil has a long history of more than 30 years of research in Arctic technology that we utilised in Alaska, as well as at offshore sites. But we know Rosneft also has years of technological expertise working in Siberia. I have no doubt that putting our two companies together, we are going to develop new approaches and new techniques that are going to allow us to access resources in the Russian Arctic efficiently, safely, with a great deal of care for the environment.

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