(FORTUNE Magazine) – Executives at Eastman Kodak, Johnson & Johnson, and a small knot of other U.S. companies interested in doing Soviet joint ventures are watching Chevron CEO Kenneth Derr, 54. They want him to drill for oil in the Soviets' Tengiz oil field, the biggest oil reserve discovered in a decade, which may contain more than the nine billion barrels in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. Derr says he'll decide whether to exercise his option to drill for the oil by December. But there are hitches. For one thing, the oil is laced with sulfur. Says Derr: ''It's high technical risk, it's high political risk, and it's got to pay some money to help our shareholders.'' These include Pennzoil CEO Hugh Liedtke, who has spent $2.1 billion for 8.8% of Chevron's stock and plans to buy more. Chevron would split the oil field profits fifty-fifty with the Soviets. The Soviets, in turn, would trade some of the hard currency they get from selling the oil for the rubles earned by members of a consortium of U.S. companies, including Kodak and J&J, thereby helping them repatriate what they make from their Soviet joint ventures.