Russia has removed Exxon as a shareholder from the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project and transferred its stake to a Russian business entity. Exxon said this amounted to expropriation and that it had pulled out from Russia as a whole, the Wall Street Journal reported. Exxon had a 30-percent stake in Sakhalin-1 but a week ago President Vladimir Putin signed a decree with which a new entity was set up to manage the operations of the Far East oil and gas project. The decree allowed the Russian government to distribute the stakes in the project and kick…